Were You the
Architect?
I’d like to begin today with a short thought experiment. Think about the best things that have happened to you over the course of your life. Don’t think too hard; just sit for a moment and see what comes to mind. Maybe one or two or three things for which you are really grateful. Once you’ve thought of a couple things, you might write them down on the blank space of your bulletin insert, or just sit with them in your mind for a moment. I’ll give us all a minute now.
…
Now here's the question I’d like to ask you. Take a look at what you’ve written down. Did these things happen because you had planned them exactly the way they happened? Were you the architect? Or was there an element of surprise or serendipity in them? Was there an element of what our world might call good fortune?
I’m guessing that for many of us, the best things that have happened in our lives have come out of nowhere. Or at least, they weren’t entirely of our own engineering.
I still remember the night in my first year abroad when I went out to the pub thinking I would be meeting one other friend, a fellow Liverpool fan. As it turned out, I ended up meeting a host of people, including a future roommate, through whom I would meet many more friends. It was as though that night a door had opened up and there was a new, unknown world before me.
And I certainly wasn’t the one who opened the door.
The Call of Abraham
Today’s scripture is a familiar one. God calls Abraham to leave his land, his people, and his home. To go where? The unknown. God doesn’t name the destination. He only says that he will show Abraham the way. He also says that it will be a good thing. Abraham will be blessed and will be a blessing. (I wonder if this two-sidedness is true of all blessing. It has no limits. When a person truly receives a blessing, they cannot help but live in a way that is generous and giving.)
In the New Testament, Paul regularly refers back to Abraham as a model for faith. Part of what fascinates Paul—and it fascinates me too!—is that Abraham shows us what faith looks like without the trappings of religion. Abraham lived before there was any Jewish scripture, before there was a Temple, before priests and sacrifices, before worship services—before all of that. Abraham shows us what faith looks like in its plainest form. It’s not about following a set of rules or rituals. It’s not about having all the right beliefs. It’s much simpler. Faith is following God into the unknown and trusting that the adventure will be a blessing.
You might remember from last week how God created everything. It was a dance of call and response. God calls, “Let there be…let there be…let there be…” and the world responds in kind, collaborating with God, giving flesh to God’s loving desire, making something good, very good. What we see in Abraham is an extension of this same creative process. Just as God calls the earth to bring forth vegetation, and the earth brings forth vegetation (Gen 1:11-12), so God calls to Abraham to leave what he knows, and Abraham leaves.
There seems to be an inherently outward movement in God’s creative impulse. In creation, God tells the creatures, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Spread out. Share the goodness. Multiply it. We see the exact opposite in the Tower of Babel, where humanity gathers together in one place, likely under the command of oppressive leaders who employ forced labor. When God puts an end to that project, he duly scatters the people “over the face of all the earth” (Gen 11:8-9). Spread out, he seems to say again. Do not hoard the gifts of life but multiply them and share them.
Hoarding in Haran?
In fact, this tension between hoarding and spreading may sit at the heart of Abraham’s story. Genesis 11 tells us that, long before God called Abraham, he was born in Ur, the Sumerian capital in Mesopotamia, one of the first recorded cities in our world. One day, his father, Terah, decides to take his family to Canaan. We are given no reason for this sudden move. Some readers have speculated that maybe Terah received the same call from God that Abraham later did. Whatever the reason, Terah does not follow through on his original itinerary, because about halfway through the journey, he reaches the city of Haran and decides to settle there instead (Gen 11:31). Why would he have chosen to stop at Haran? Historians tell us that the name Haran likely comes from an ancient word for “road,” and that it was indeed at a crossroads. In other words, it was a center of trade in the ancient world.
We can imagine, then, that Abraham’s family found Haran to be an appealing destination, a place of security and stability. In Haran, they would have access to everything good the world could offer: good food, quality housing, cultured neighbors. They could drop anchor here and slowly piece together a life of comfort and convenience and predictability. Here in Haran they had found a foundation for building a good life. They could be architects of their own future and store up whatever treasures they could acquire.
It is at this juncture that Abraham, now at the ripe old age of seventy-five, hears God’s unsettling call. Literally unsettling. Maybe that is true, in some small way, of all of God’s calls—that they are unsettling? Anyway, Abraham leaves. He leaves knowing everything he will be losing and nothing specific about what he will be gaining. All he has is God’s word that he will be blessed and a blessing.
The Gifts and the
Giver
What stands out to me at the beginning of Abraham’s journey into the unknown is his habit of building altars to God. Twice in our short scripture, he pauses his journey, not to settle down as his father did in Haran, but to build a momentary altar to God (Gen 12:7-8). Nowhere does God give him instructions to do this. He’s not worshiping God because he’s been told to. He’s not performing some mandated ritual. The motivation seems much more basic: he desires to be near God. I interpret his altars as an expression of his trust. He trusts not in the life that he can build on his own but in the Creator who is doing something much bigger. He trusts not in the gifts of this world, which earlier his family may have hoarded in Haran, but in the Giver, who is always doing something new.
Throughout scripture, there runs a theme of trusting the Giver rather than the gifts themselves. Gifts that are held onto too tightly always seems to turn sour, as in the wilderness when people tried to store up manna and it rotted after a day (Ex 16:19-20), or as in Jesus’ story of the rich fool who builds larger barns only to lose everything in a night (Luke 12:13-21). Instead of clinging to his gifts, Abraham clings to the Giver, who whisks him away from gifts past that he might receive and share unknown blessings.
What I am learning from Abraham today, then—and I suppose I also learn this when I pay attention to Christ—is a few simple things. First, faith is an adventure into unknown goodness. Second, blessings are not meant to be stored up but shared. And third, even when it looks bleak, even when the gifts of the past disappear, even when the future is in the shape of a cross, faith means trusting that the Giver of life does not stop giving.
Prayer
Giver of unknown blessings—
Sometimes our gratitude
For the gifts of the past
Mutates into desperate clutching
And storing up
…
Loosen our grip on things
And renew our trust in you, the Giver,
That we may go easy into the unknown
To receive and give your blessing,
To multiply your goodness.
In Jesus Christ, who lived by your daily bread: Amen.
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