“JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN”
Genesis 12:1-9
(06-08-08)

Genesis is a book of beginnings.
In Genesis we find the account of the beginning of the universe.
We find the account of the beginning of life,
including the beginning of humankind.
These accounts are not scientific,
they don’t give us formulas or empirical proofs,
what they do give us are stories of origin
which tell us about God’s intention for us and for creation.
Stories of origin pull us back when we stray from God’s purposes for us
and remind us of life’s fundamental purposes.

With Adam and Eve and the story of the Garden of Eden,
we come to know that we are created in God’s image,
that we are created out of goodness, to be good,
to be in relationship with God and with one another.
We learn that we are not owners,
but stewards of God’s good gifts.
We learn from that story the freedom of choice that God gave creation
and how humankind subverted that gift and chose our own way
and the result of that choice.
In the Noah story we learn that left to our own devices,
humanity chooses a path that leads away from God
and towards corruption and violence.
Through Noah and his family,
we come to know a God who is merciful and remembers creation,
and resolves never again to destroy.

Our story this morning, the story of the call of Abram,
is another one of those fundamental stories,
a story of origin which introduces something new and profound about God,
something that God wants us to know, from the very beginning.
Abram, or Abraham, as he will come to be known,
lived with his wife Sarai, who would come to be called Sarah,
in the land of Haran, about 500 miles from the promised land.
He lived there with his people, as part of his father’s family.
The call of God comes to Abram and it comes out of nowhere.
The call is an act of unmerited grace and favour.
Nothing has prepared us for Abram, it is an act of God’s choosing.
Grace is always God’s initiative.
The call is unambiguous, but it is also lacking in specifics.
Go, from your country and your kindred and your father’s house,
to the land that I will show you.
I will make you a great nation and bless you,
and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse,
and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.
That’s quite the call!

But God’s not too specific in laying out the details,
in fact the only prior information we know about Abram before the call
is that his wife Sarai is barren.
How would Abram become a great nation
if he and Sarai were unable to have children?
But before we get to how that issue will be resolved,
Abram needs to respond to God’s call, and he does!
At the age of 75, Abram left his country, his kindred and his father’s house,
with his wife and his nephew Lot, and their possessions,
and they journeyed to the land which God showed them.
Abram went without knowing.
Part of faith, the faith which was credited to Abram,
was that without knowing, without empirical proof,
he trusted God and he went when God called him to go.
Isn’t that what faith is about sometimes?
How often does God’s desire for us get stopped
before it even has a chance to start
because we won’t budge, because we won’t move?
How often do we let our fears, our doubts, our insecurity
stop us from being open to how God may want to move in and through us?
Sometimes the first step in faith,
the first step in knowing God’s newness in our lives,
is to step forward in faith,
even when we don’t know all the details.

About 35 years ago, when my father was just a bit younger than I am today,
he left his country, his job, his friends, just about everything he knew
and came to Canada with my mother and their two sons.
True, my father had a few family members who were already in Canada,
but I try to imagine leaving Canada,
with my wife, with my two kids,
to a land that I know practically nothing about,
to a place where I don’t have the first inkling
about the language, the culture, the people, the traditions,
where there is no job waiting for me,
where I have no clue how I will provide for my family,
and I get scared.
I wonder if I were called,
whether I would let my doubts, my fears and my insecurity
hold me back from the possibility of God’s newness.

No doubt my father and my mother have some regrets about leaving their homeland,
I’m sure that sometimes they wake up and can’t believe that they live in Canada
and wonder what life would have been like if they had just stayed in Korea.
But I know that a substantial part of the reason they came to Canada,
a big part of the reason they left all that they knew
to come to a place which was as foreign to them as Mars would be to me,
was that their vision was larger that just their immediate needs.
Coming to Canada wasn’t only about their needs,
in fact in many ways it was more about the needs of the their children
and the needs of the future generations.

This sense of a larger vision is key
to what God desires to reveal through the Abram story.
And there are at least two aspects to this larger vision
which are fundamental for our understanding
about God and God’s relationship with humanity.

First, God called Abram to go to a land which he would show him.
And in the process of the journey,
God also said that Abram would be a blessing to the nations,
to the all the families of the earth.
The story of Abram’s call is a story of origin
which tells us of God’s key intention of enlarging our sense of community.
God calls a specific person, Abram.
God says that he will bless Abram and make his name great.
But God also says that Abram will be a blessing
and that in him, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
God’s blessing does not come to Abram in a vacuum.
God’s call is a creative act, and as with all God’s acts of creation,
the call is rooted in relationships.
God’s blessing of Abram is intended to be shared with all the families of the earth.
And it is always the case with God’s blessing.
God never blesses us in isolation.
If God has blessed you in some way,
it is never only for your benefit.
if God has blessed Grace Church in some way,
it is never only for our benefit,
If God has blessed Grace Church,
it is because God desires Grace Church to be a blessing,
that through us, through this church,
others will also be blessed.
The first thing to understand about a larger vision is that its never just about us.

As Abram leaves Haran and journeys to Canaan,
we are told that the Canaanites were in the land.
With the migration of Abram to Canaan,
the sense of who is included in God’s community is enlarged.
In fact, because Abram is to be a blessing
and because God wants to use Abram to bless all the families of the earth,
everywhere Abram journeys,
the people that are introduced in the Biblical narrative
also become included in the families that God intends to bless.
God, from the very beginning,
intends to enlarge our sense of who is bless-able by God,
who is part of God’s community.
When sometime we are about narrowing who is acceptable,
God is always about expanding the possibilities.

The second aspect of the larger vision we need to understand
is that that the plans of God which involve us
won’t necessarily be completed in our lifetimes.

Abram left his country, his kindred and his father’s house,
along with his wife Sarai,
because God had promised to make him a great nation.
But for the longest time there was no evidence of how that would ever be achieved.
And even when at last the heir is born,
Abram dies without ever seeing a glimpse of that great nation.
It will be generations before the kind of nation
that would even resemble what God had promised would begin to take shape.

God’s plans for us don’t always mean
that we’ll be around to see how those plans come to fruition.
That’s what faith is about,
to take those first steps when we don’t know how it will all end.
Faith is often a journey to the unknown,
but our faith is always rooted in the known goodness and promise of God.

What steps are we being called to take for the sake of our faith in God today?
Last Monday the Session and Board of this congregation
met to discern where God might be leading us,
how God might be using us to be a blessing to others.
One of our discernments was to take some time
to develop the concept and meaning of what it means
when we say that Grace Church is where ‘Community becomes Family.’
Reverend Walker and I will spend most of the summer
intentionally preaching and teaching about what those words mean in our context.

I believe that the Abram story has much to teach us
about what it means when we say community becomes family.
Just as God used Abram to extend his reach
to people who once may not have known God’s blessing,
God uses Grace Church to extend his reach to those in our community
who might feel that they somehow stand beyond the reach of God’s embrace.
When we say community becomes family,
community must mean something bigger than what we already know.
Community isn’t only what’s already inside.
Community must include those who are still outside.
When we speak of community we need to ask ourselves,
does God love those others, those on the outside,
as he loves us?
The idea that community becomes family
needs to begin with a larger sense of what that community is.

God’s blessing is never given in isolation.
That’s why we engage in mission and outreach, in evangelism.
Community means those who are homeless, those who are hungry,
those who are troubled and confused.
Community means those who are shunned because they are different from us,
those who don’t look like us, who don’t speak like us, who don’t agree with us. Community means we partner and engage
with the Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan in Calgary,
with the refugees from Somalia,
with the young women who are getting off the streets and into a new life
through Servants Anonymous at Grace House.
Community means that we expand who we think Grace Church is, and will be.

There’s great challenge that lies ahead of us.
What will Grace Church be a generation from now?
Who will be part of the community of this church in our future?
I am convinced that the decline of mainline denominations
will continue for the foreseeable future.
Many of our churches will close their doors.
But some will survive and not only will they survive, they will thrive.
What will set these churches apart
will be their discovery of what God has in mind for them,
God’s calling for them.
Those churches that survive and thrive
will be churches that are able to discern and understand the blessings God has given them
and that those blessings are never given in a vacuum.

Those churches that survive and thrive
will be churches that don’t use God’s blessings
to try to shore up their defences against an ever encroaching world
or to use God’s blessings
just to maintain what they’ve been doing for as long as they can.

Those churches that survive and thrive
will be churches that understand that God’s blessings are meant to be shared
with the community around them, both near and far.

Those churches that survive and thrive
will recognize that God doesn’t give every church the same gifts
but that God equips us uniquely,
to serve where he has placed us,
to bloom where we are planted.

Grace Church is unique among Presbyterian churches in our city.
We are unique because of our location and also because of our gifts.
The future of Grace Church will be rooted
in the community which is springing up all around us,
just as it always has been.
But here in the core of the city,
we continue to experience a growing diversity and richness of people
that you just don’t find elsewhere.
We don’t have to go very far
if we want to be a blessing to all the families of the earth,
they’re right here on our doorstep.
This is God’s gift to us, this is our sense of community.
The future of Grace Church is to be a church
where this kind of community becomes family.
When I consider the blessing of God to Grace Church,
I imagine a community where the children of Lost Boys and the descendants of refugees, where people from every background, every culture, every experience,
where everyone who needs God and loves God
can worship together as a family that knows that God loves them.
The future of Grace Church is a church
where the diversity out there is reflected in here.

Now to be honest, that may take some time.
In fact, it may take longer than most of us have.
So here’s another challenging part.
Are we willing to be pioneers in the faith?
Today, at a crucial point in our history,
as many churches all around us are facing decline and decay,
would we take the steps of faith to begin a journey to the unknown?

Would you and I be pioneers in faith,
and like Abram, journey to the unknown,
but trusting that God will be faithful?
Will we lay the groundwork,
even if we never get to see the full results in our lifetime?
What steps are we willing to take in faith,
not only for ourselves,
but for those who will come after us?

There will come a day when community will be family
to a degree that we can only hint at today.
But I am confident that if we are faithful
and if we lay the foundations today in obedience to God’s calling,
that day will come.
That day will come when our children and their children
will be part of a thriving church
where God’s expanded sense of community is embraced
and God’s gift of family is celebrated with all God’s children.
That day will come.

We can begin that journey today.
The call comes to us, just as it did to Abram.
I will bless you and make you a blessing,
so that through you,
all the families of the earth will be blessed.

And to God be the glory, now and forevermore, Amen.