Wild at Heart and Loving It!

Pentecost 11 (C)Genesis 15:1-6
After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.’ But Abram said, ‘O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?’ And Abram said, ‘You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.’ But the word of the LORD came to him, ‘This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.’ He brought him outside and said, ‘Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.

Sermon
If you’ve been through any one of a dozen towns in Minnesota, you have probably seen a larger-than-life statue of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe. If not, then perhaps you recognize the story from your childhood reading days of a legendary mythological lumberjack. Paul Bunyan embodied the American pioneer spirit during the nineteenth century. He symbolized the heart of a society that saw itself as a society of explorers and adventurers.

Today in our readings we come across another larger than life figure – Abraham. He is, like Paul Bunyan, a pioneer. He is, like Paul Bunyan, an explorer and an adventurer. He, like Paul Bunyan, embodies the heart of a people – the people of God. But unlike Paul Bunyan, Abraham is not simply some legend or mythological character. Abraham was real. He was a real man, with real faith, in a real God. And he is your ancestor in faith. His life will tell you how to understand your life and what to expect from your God. There are so many things we can learn about faith and our life with God from the life of Abraham.

The most obvious lesson about our life with God we get from Abraham is that faith is a journey.

As much as we would like have things nailed down, well organized, and nicely packaged, our life with God just isn’t that way. You see that clearly when in Hebrews it says that Abraham moved forward “not knowing where he was going.” Sounds just like a man doesn’t it? Abraham, at the ripe old age of 75, packed up his belongings, his family, his servants, his goats, everything but the kitchen sink, and set off for the horizon. And he had no idea where he was going! He didn’t know what the future held. He didn’t know what was waiting for him around the next bend or over the next hill. When he tried to project himself down the road in his life he came up blank. At a time when you might expect some measure of certainty about your life and what to expect, Abraham only had questions. It was a mystery to him.

Sound familiar? How many of you have wondered about what lay in store for you? How many of you have tried to look around the next bend and come up with nothing more than strained eyes? How many of you have tried to see over the next hill and wound up with a sore neck? Your kids . . . when you pray or ponder your futures, how clear is that to you? Your livelihood . . . when you try to get a feel for what is coming your way, what do you sense?

If you are like Abraham, not much, you just don’t know. Our lives don’t develop as if they were following a script written by some grand all-knowing author, whether that be human or divine. Our lives meander . . . wander . . . and wind back and forth and side to side. If you come in faith to Christ Jesus looking for predictability in daily life, you are going to be frustrated. That’s just the reality of it.

That lack of predictability, that wandering way of life points us to another reality of Abraham’s life and the lives of believers who follow in his footsteps with God. And that is the adventure of it all. The faith we share with Abraham is a journey of adventure. When Abraham reached down and pulled up his roots out of Ur the land of the Chaldeans, he wound his way up the Fertile Crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers passing through the cradle of civilization through deep mountain passes into the wild. This was a kind of roughing-it that would have made Davy Crockett tip his coon-skin cap. It was a kind of exploration that would have made Louis and Clark stand up in their canoes and applaud.

The journey that Abraham and every believer sets-out on is not some depressing death march to nowhere. It is a life of exploration and discovery. In his home in Ur the land of the Chaldeans, Abraham would be surrounded with familiar sounds and smells. The ingredients that spiced-up his food would have been as common to him as the dust that clung to his sandals. Each day was one run-of-the-mill day after the other.

But on the journey with God, life became an adventure, a world full of firsts. Out on the road with God, he stood face to face with new peoples. Passing by the Mediterranean Sea, he would smell for the first time the salt in the air and the fish in the market. On his way and with God at his side, he would know the cold hardness of a sword in his hand as he engaged in battle for Lot against the Canaanites. With God at his side, he would pass by the Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Sphinx.

How often have images of far-away places caught your attention? How often have you harbored a secret desire for something new and exciting to break into your world and whisk you away on the adventure of a lifetime? You are never more alive than when you are on an adventure. Your senses come alive. Your eyes pick up on colors and shapes and combinations of the materials in new ways. And you are dazzled. Your ears hear sounds that you never heard before. You smell and taste food and drink that is almost from another world.

If you are like Abraham, and you are like Abraham, there is a lust for exploration and adventure that only God can satisfy. This is what awaits you as you move on down the road with God to a new life.

And because of this journey of a lifetime, this wild explorer’s journey, you have the sense that something good is going to happen. Abraham didn’t know where he was going, but he knew that something dramatically wonderful was going to happen. God had promised him that a blessing awaited him and the whole world on his journey. In fact, God said in Genesis 12 that all the peoples of the earth would be blessed because of it. And you, my people, you are children of Abraham, with the same wanderlust flowing through your veins. And because you have the same attraction to the God-adventure as Abraham, you must also know that there is something dramatically wonderful waiting for you. You do know it don’t you? Certainly you can feel it. There is a tug, a pull, some irresistible draw that moves you along. Just as when God looked at Abraham he saw promise, when God looks at you he sees promise written all over you. Your life is pregnant with promise and potential! That is the reality of the situation.


But because you are like Abraham, because you have taken the leap of faith that moves you forward without having to know all the answers, because you have accepted God’s invitation to adventure and exploration, and because you know that your life is full of promise and possibility, you also should know that there will be some dark moments, moments when you catch yourself wondering if it is at all true. There will be moments along the way when all that you see and hear and experience seems to contradict your time with God. And you will find yourself wondering if the conversations and connections you have made with the God of Abraham are just an echo chamber of your own thoughts, hopes, and desires. And like Abraham, who in today’s reading from Genesis chapter 15, wrestles with doubt, you and I will find ourselves wondering if the story the of promise of God is just a legend we have been telling ourselves.

That’s Abraham’s plight today in Genesis chapter 15. He began his journey with God at the ripe old age of 75. Now, he’s pushing 100. And still the dramatic goodness, the blessing, the promise that God saw so clearly for Abraham is nowhere in sight. So Abraham pulls off to the side of the road, hops off his camel-ac, looks to heaven and asks “What’s the deal?” Have you ever wanted to do that? Have you ever wanted to just talk “turkey” with the God of Abraham? You can. It’s not out of place. And it’s not out of order. In fact, God expects it. It’s just as much a part of the journey as the adventure.

The reality of it is that the God of Abraham restates, repeats, and reissues the promise that moved Abraham into a new life. And God does the same for you, child of Abraham. No matter what doubts cross your mind, no matter how long you need to pull off the side of the road, no matter how often the things that you experience stand in your way, your God restates, repeats, and reissues the promise to you. That is the reality of the situation.