Genesis 11:31-12:4a
Romans 4:1-8, 16-17
In these summer months, I’d like us to walk together through some of the book of Genesis, following Abraham and Sarah and their descendants. I think that their stories speak in surprising and powerful ways to our own very different lives in this very different world. This is the case even with this morning’s brief description of the early situation: “When they came to Haran, they settled there.”
In Ur of the Chaldees, five days down the river from Babylon, Terah and his family catch the attention of God. It’s not much of a family, really. One of Terah’s sons is dead. Another, Abraham, is married to Sarah; and Genesis describes her this way: “Now Sarah was barren; she had no child.” The biblical scholar Walter Brueggeman interprets Sarah’s condition with bluntness: Sarah is barren, and that barrenness is a metaphor for hopelessness. This family has no future, no place to go.[i]
Terah takes his family toward the land of Canaan. But half way there, when they reach the city of Haran, Genesis tells us, they settle there.
Along with the rest of his family, Abraham settles in Haran.
He settles for what comes to him.
He settles for what is normal.
He settles for life as he knows it.
It isn't much of a life, really. While ages in the Bible might not reflect our modern way of counting the years, Abraham, we are told, is 75. Sarah, his wife, is ten years younger. They have no children. They are, even at this age, still living with Abraham’s father.
This family, as one person put it, has “played itself out.”
They have settled.
Our Congregational tradition refers to the permanent pastor of a congregation as the “settled minister.” That’s a good term in many ways. It suggests someone who is well positioned, established—in one place for the long haul so that significant ministry can be done. I like that. But the phrase also hides a danger of complacency, resignation, acceptance of what is normal.
So I worry at times: am I a “settled” minister?
And I wonder: When did you settle?
When did you decide that “the way things are” is good enough?
When did you decide that more of the same would be all that you would ask of life?
When did you decide that life as you know it is all that you would want or ask of life?
In your twenties? Thirties? Forties?
And I wonder: When did we settle as a congregation?
When did we decide the way things are is good enough?
When did we decide that more of the same would be all that we would ask of this church?
When did we decide that life as we know it is all that we would want or ask of this congregation?
Increasingly we are being asked to settle for a new way of national life.
Our President calls the press the enemy of the American people and we take him both seriously and literally.
Attacks on the press are increasing. Residents of Montana elected a Representative after he choked and body slammed a reporter who dared to ask him about health care. Defenders pointed out that this reporter—a Grinnell graduate—was kind of obnoxious, so I guess that’s OK.
At the offices of a newspaper in Lexington, KY, the windows were shot out.
It’s just the way things are now.
We have a President who began his political career by questioning the place of birth of our first African American president; who in campaigning promised: “Don’t worry — we’ll take our country back very soon, very soon;” who since the first days of his administration has been trying to ban people from Muslim countries from traveling to the United States.
Then a man with a record of “extremist ideology,” spewing hate speech at two teenage girls, one of whom was wearing a hijab, killed two men who came to the girls’ defense.
The President took to Twitter to condemn the Portland attack. But many worry that the racist, Islamaphobic, and anti-immigrant rhetoric of the campaign are finding their fulfillment in an increasing number of attacks.
It’s just the way things are now. Get used to it.
Get used to lies instead of truth. Get used to exclusion instead of inclusion. Get used to the Christian faith being co-opted for purposes of hate.
Settle in the United States.
Get used to the new normal.
Of course, as Bruce Cockburn once sang: “The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.”
Slowly we become numb.
Slowly we lose all sense of outrage.
Slowly our souls are deadened and we settle into hopelessness.
If barrenness is a metaphor for hopelessness, barrenness is also the arena of God's action. Remember how Paul put it in his letter to the Romans? “God gives life to the dead and calls into existence those things that do not exist.”
Those who are hopeless;
those who are without a future;
those who are afraid;
really, people like you and me at some point;
those are the people whom God seeks out.
Listen. God speaks a word into our resignation and despair. “The Lord said to Abraham, 'Go . . .’”
Something--or Someone--unsettles Abraham, troubling the waters of his life.
Something convinces him that even now the future holds more promise than the past or the present. Someone convinces him that something great could come out of the nothing that his life has been.
Abraham finds courage.
Or maybe we could say that courage finds Abraham.
What does the voice of God sound like?
It might be the voice that we hear in our deepest discontent, when we are least satisfied with life as it is, when the pain of the present is finally too much.
Sometimes that voice speaks to individuals.
Sometimes that voice speaks to a whole community, an entire people.
And sometimes, sometimes by the grace of God, that voice speaks to a congregation.
The faith we know is not about adapting and adjusting.
In words that I keep returning to, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke against settling when he said: “I never did intend to adjust to the evils of segregation and discrimination. I never did intend to adjust myself to religious bigotry. I never did intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many and give luxuries to the few. I never did intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence. And I call upon all [people] of goodwill to be maladjusted because it may well be that the salvation of our world lies in the hands of the maladjusted.”
A “normal” economic order that makes hunger and poverty a growing reality contains the seeds of trouble. The unsettled will seek justice.
The “normal” racism that remains rampant in so many places in our nation contains the seeds of trouble. The unsettled will seek the equality that respects all people as beings created in the image of God.
Maybe you’ve experienced that nagging feeling that your life is not as it should be, not as you want it to be.
Retirement comes and you ask: "Now what?"
You finish school and wonder what comes next.
Or you wake up in the middle of the night asking, in the words of the old Talking Heads song: "Well, how did I get here?"
Listen carefully to the voice that speaks in your discontent—it may be the voice of God.
Have you looked at this state, this nation, this world—have you seen racial hatred, hunger, senseless violence, and felt something in the pit of your stomach that said “It doesn't have to be this way!”
Listen carefully. It is possible that you are hearing the unsettling voice of God in your dissatisfaction.
Yes, it is a voice that calls for a response, a voice that urges change.
To Abraham and Sarah the voice of God says “Go.” Don't settle. Don’t think life is over yet. Don’t accept the cards you have been dealt.
Listen. Into our resigned despair, God speaks a word that leads to courage.
The word that God speaks invites us into the future.
A lot of people don't like talk about the future. They know that as soon as we start talking about “the future” we are talking about the unknown, the uncertain. UI graduate Tennessee Williams said: "The future is called 'perhaps' which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to let that scare you."
Oh, but it does scare us.
Receiving the promise of the future entails leaving behind the certainty of the present. Abraham and Sarah are asked to leave their country, their clan, and their family. Because we have a finite amount of time and energy, taking on new projects always involves giving up some old ones.
A promise carries with it the sense of “maybe.” What is promised “may be”—but when, where, and how?
Abraham hears that God will make of him a great nation—a great nation of childless Abraham and barren Sarah. They believe the promise, and their belief is the only guarantee they have.
The promise of God can be trusted.
And we trust by faith. Faith is not certainty, but the willingness to take a chance on the vision that you have.
Abraham and Sarah, yes.
But also you and I.
We are all invited into the future.
Now lift up your eyes and look! There go Abraham and Sarah.
The name “Haran” means crossroads. At a crucial crossing point they make the decision to hear and respond to the unsettling word of God and go.
In the eternal human/divine dialogue, our response is as important as God's word. “So Abraham went. . .” is how Genesis puts it.
There go Abraham and Sarah. Now and again they stop on their way to the land of promise to worship the God who speaks in discontent, the God whose words are as much challenge as they are comfort, the God who can be trusted to bring life out of death, calling new things into being.
Sure it’s frightening at times—especially at times like this. The future is always unknown. Change is always difficult and demands courage. When we follow in faith, the necessary courage develops within us.
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.
Do not settle. There is a peace that comes only out of restlessness, out of wandering, out of not settling for the way things are. In our pilgrimages we discover the deep peace of God shining on our lives in unexpected ways, in unexpected places. When the peace of God comes upon us, we are stirred from lethargy, we see what might be, and we seek the new thing that God is doing in the world.
Do not settle. Seek out the value of each individual human being—of you and me, of neighbors and the strangers who walk by or through our doors—the value of each human being that is grounded in the fact that we are the children of God. This is a different value than we find in the rest of the world. It's not who you know or what you know, it's not what you have done or haven't done, it's not how much money you have or don't have that establishes your worth as a person. We are who God says we are—the daughters and sons of God. You are a child of God. That is enough. And that cannot be taken away from you.
Do not settle. Live in these difficult times and make difficult choices with the courage that comes from knowing you are loved by God, and that love empowers us for great things. When we act with courage in the face of those things that destroy, it will not be easy. By God’s grace, we find ourselves faithful enough and maladjusted enough to choose correctly.
Do not settle. Let your light shine. The world can be very dark and cold. But here and there, now and then, people like you find ways to bring some light, some warmth into the world. Sometimes it is a brilliant light that amazes and inspires all who see it. Sometimes the light is faint, but it is enough, enough to see a little better, a little further down the road ahead when we follow the God who unsettles us, saying: “Go.”
[i]. Walter Brueggeman, Genesis, Interpretation commentary.