March 5, 2006 Sermon

So It Begins
Genesis 12:1-9

Roger Clemens might be the best pitcher in baseball. Now 43, Clemens has dominated his sport for twenty years. Spring training started last week and Clemens, though he has not yet decided if he will continue playing, showed up for the workouts. The first time he pitched batting practice the first hitter he faced was Koby, his eldest son. The Houston Astros had drafted Koby, 21, a power hitting third baseman.

Koby crushed his father’s first pitch, sending it deep over the left field fence for a home run. With his next pitch Roger Clemens buzzed a fastball under his son’s chin. He threw a high, hard one so close to Koby’s face he had to sprawl into the dirt to avoid getting hit.

Welcome to professional baseball, son.

What happened next? The two men grinned at each other. Later Koby told a reporter, “I wasn’t mad at him. I knew what he was doing.” What he was doing was what any serious pitcher would do: use fear to command the hitter’s respect. Pitchers and hitters are enemies. Each does whatever he can to defeat the other. The relationship between father and son can get a little touchy, too. Occasionally fathers and sons become outright enemies. More often they become rivals, competitors who must work out how to get along as each ages into new stages of life.

Today we start a series of sermons from the book of Genesis. I strongly urge you to read Genesis. Studying the text will give you a better understanding of these sermons. We will focus on Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: father, son and grandson. Their struggles will seem familiar to us. Their interactions with God will teach us a great deal about our own spiritual ups and downs.

We read just now from Genesis 12. These verses introduce Abraham, who at this point in the story still goes by the name of Abram, which means “exalted father”. Abram will father not only the Jews (through Sarai, his wife), but also the Arabs (through Hagar, his concubine). In a sense Abram also serves as spiritual father for all Christians—even those of us with Northern European bloodlines. Jesus himself appealed to the scriptural traditions about Abram in his teaching, as did Paul, the author of half of the New Testament.

Genesis 12:1 starts us at the very beginning of Abram’s story. He lives in Haran in Mesopotamia, the country between the rivers in northwestern Iraq . Abram is not an Iraqi. He is not an Arab. There is no such thing as an Iraqi or an Arab in his day. His bloodlines extend back into the tribes that wandered into the region before recorded history. He has a wife. They have no children but Abram does have responsibility for an extended family, numerous servants, and large herds of grazing animals. He is well off and living in a garden spot.

In Genesis 12:1 the Lord suddenly tells Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you.” My parents raised me with the expectation that I would go wherever my career took me. I have raised my children with the same bias. It’s a bittersweet thing, opening your children up to choices and opportunities that will probably take them away. Abram grew up with the opposite expectation. An eldest son, he knows that in time he will take over the leadership of the clan. He will tend the land and the flocks. But God just up and tells him to leave home.

The Lord does give Abram more to go on (literally): “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great…and by your name all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves.” The message is clear. God calls. Obey and receive blessings. But we have a problem. We live well. Most of us have no reason to go. When people make it big we say they have arrived, not that they ought to leave it all and go on some wild goose chase through the desert.

And the desert awaits Abram. Verses four and five tell us he takes all his kin and possessions and slaves and “set forth to go to the land of Canaan .” Ancient Canaan and modern Israel share roughly the same borders. To get there Abram leads his mob away from the rivers. They traverse low mountain passes and arid stretches from oasis to oasis. When he reaches Canaan he will find the land already occupied. Why did he do it?!? Genesis does not explicitly tell us. It says only that God made promises, told Abram to go, and Abram went.

Once Abram arrives he makes his first stop at Shechem. Bruce Feiler, author of the excellent Walking the Bible, describes Israel as a tablecloth. Smooth it out, but then bunch it up on one side. Crouch at the end of your table and look along the length of that cloth. The flat part is the plain the runs from the Mediterranean Sea to the central hills, the bunched up part. But then the cloth drops straight down off the table. This represents the Jordan River Valley , which includes the lowest spot on the face of the earth, the Dead Sea . To get to Shechem Abram drives his herds across a ford in the Jordan , then UP those bunched-up mountains.

Once on top of that ridge Abram takes a left and follows an ancient trail. Barely broad enough for two men to walk shoulder to shoulder, it twists and turns until it drops a little into a shallow valley. There lies Shechem, site of modern-day Nablus in Israel ’s West Bank . People have lived there for at least 7,000 years. The Canaanites have a small city there; Abram probably camps outside it. Here the Lord again speaks to him: “To your descendents I will give this land.” Abram builds an altar, probably of stones from the valley, and makes a sacrificial offering.

Abram immediately pushes on, probably because he cannot find enough space to feed his flocks. He needs a less-populated place, so he presses farther south, first to Bethel . The town and its twin, Ai to the east, also do not offer Abram enough room. So after building another altar he pushes on all the way to the Negev . There he finally stops. The Negev is Israel ’s southern desert. It blends into the Sinai and Arabian deserts to its south. But in the north it has just enough water and forage to support Abram and his flocks.

So Abram left a cozy situation and landed in a difficult, barely livable place. He did it because one day he heard the Lord tell him to do it. What would we do?

We would get on the Internet to check weather patterns and real estate prices in any potential new home. If we had children we would look into the school districts. Maybe we would dicker with our new employers to cover our moving expenses. In short, we do not move until we have done our best to remove every possible surprise. We do not move on faith, but on information.

Abram moved on faith. He heard the Lord tell him to go and he went. Sure, he heard some promises, but we all know how that goes. The realtors promise great selection and low prices. The schools promise the sun and the moon and the stars. The employers promise raises.

Abram had heard it all before, too. Yet he went on the basis of God’s promises. Where does God call you to go? To mend a broken relationship? To leave behind a destructive habit? To risk all on a new job? To serve Him more fully through the church? Follow the example of Abram. Go where you are called. Trust the promises. Abram became the father of nations. In Christ, it will work out fine for you, too.