As this is the first Sunday of March we will be celebrating communion this week. Also our Annual Congregational Meeting will follow the service.
The Scripture Readings this week are:
- Genesis 12:1-9
- Psalm 121
The Sermon title is Get Up and Go!
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Early Thoughts: What would you do? Imagine you are minding your own business and your spouse comes home and says "God says we have to leave everything behind and go to some unknown future". How would you react?
We are not told how Sarai (later known as Sarah) reacted when Abram (later Abraham) came in and told her what God had told him to do. We are simply told that they packed everything up and left, taking one relative (and the whole household, which seems to have included servants/slaves), striking out to who knows where.
Imagine that. You are old and childless, in a society where the 'social safety net' consisted of family caring for family. [Maybe that is why they take Lot along?] And yet you strike out on a journey that will take you away from that safety net, going on the basis of a promise of land (sliding over the slight problem that the promised land was already occupied) and a great nation to follow. For all you know you will never see or even hear from your family again. Would you do it?
Of course countless people have done it for centuries. Before things like the telegraph, or telephone or the internet people struck out for new frontiers and rarely or never went home again. "Go west young man" was advice that came with a lot of loss and risk. It is an act of faith and courage to simply get up and go.
As I reflect on what I just wrote I am reminded of our Gospel stories. Jesus also invited people to get up and go, leaving behind everything they had known. And some did it. I suggest that in some ways Jesus continues to issue that invitation for us to get up and go. Maybe not in geography but certainly in terms of being counter-cultural. As Ken Canedo writes in the third verse of his song Fish With Me (#113 in More Voices):
If you want to follow me, deny your very self.
Take up your cross and walk the walk with me.
This might seem a hardship, and impossibility, but nothing is impossible with God.
Oh, Come and follow me. Oh, leave behind your nets I call you,
Oh, come and fish with me, and your life will never be the same again.
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How can we do this? If you read past chapter 12 in Genesis you will quickly find that Abraham and Sarah had a rough path ahead of them. The journey to God's promises being fulfilled was not a Sunday walk in the park. It had multiple hiccups and roadblocks along the way. There must have been times when they wondered if packing up and going was the best choice after all.
Through out the story of Scripture there have been times when people felt besieged as they tried to follow God's path. Some of them lost hope for a period of time. But some wrote songs about where they found hope. Bring on one of my favourite Psalms, #121.
When we leave behind what was once secure and safe we need some assurance. What do we see when we look to the hills around us? When we feel like we are out in the wilderness of life where do we find help?
In a word..... God. The psalmist reminds us that God will not abandon us, that God will not slumber or sleep.
We are invited to 'get up and go". We are challenged to leave behind the familiar and secure in search of a new world somewhere they call the promised land (yes I know it is really a love song the Seekers sang but in a way it works here too). But we do not go alone. Abraham and Sarah were never alone. Jesus's followers were -- and are -- never alone. God invites us to go, but God goes with us.
And that is a very good thing.
--Gord
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