The internet has discovered I\u2019m retired. Every day, I get offers of how to make money in retirement, how to travel in retirement, how to deal with the stress of retirement. The best advice I\u2019ve gotten is to try something new. I\u2019ve decided to take up sewing. It might not seem like a predictable choice but it sounds better than driving for Uber and considering the cost of boat cushions, it would save me a lot of money to be able to make new ones myself. So I asked around among some friends who sew, looking for advice. The best advice of all was someone who said, \u201cYou\u2019re going to make a lot of mistakes at first. Don\u2019t worry. The thing about sewing is, you can always rip it out and start over.\u201d I like that idea: starting over. Have you ever had to start over? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Starting over is just what God is doing in the passage we read from Genesis. In the beginning, God created and the purpose was a mutually blessing community of appreciation. Everything was good; you\u2019ve read it, you\u2019ve heard this, God creates and it is good. But then human pride slips in and things go wrong and it ends up in violence and a complete mess. In just a few generations, we\u2019re told, \u201c\u2026the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. [Gen 6:6]. So God starts over, gives Noah directions on how to build a boat, wipes the slate clean, sets a rainbow to mark the occasion. You\u2019d think this time it would go better but it doesn\u2019t. Years pass, people grow up, settle down, forget to give thanks and their pride gets working again, until they decide they can reach heaven on their own. They build a tower at Babel and it\u2019s not good, not good at all. God scatters them and they end up speaking different languages. It\u2019s a mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So God is starting over with Abram and, although she isn\u2019t mentioned here, his wife Sarai. If you\u2019re counting, this is the third time. God still has the same design, a community of mutual blessing and appreciation. It just hasn\u2019t worked out. Creating wasn\u2019t enough; the rainbow covenant wasn\u2019t enough. So God decides to start out with just one couple, make them a family, and grow from there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first thing God says is, \u201cGo!\u201d Now, if you\u2019re like me, when someone says, \u201cGo!\u201d, I immediately ask, \u201cWhere to?\u201d We have one of those cars now with a screen that displays a map. But to make it work right, you have to put in a place; the car wants to know where we\u2019re going. The car wants a destination and it\u2019s nice to know where to. Most weeks I drive Jacquelyn to the airport in Baltimore. I know how to get there, but I still put in the destination because it\u2019s comforting to know how close to our destination we\u2019re getting. But listen to what God says to Abram: \u201cGo from your country and your kindred and your father\u2019s house to the land that I will show you.\u201d [Gen 12:1a] This isn\u2019t a destination that will work with the GPS. The GPS wants an address, a particular place, not just \u201csomewhere\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Notice also how God goes out of the way to emphasize the going. There\u2019s a three-fold description of what going means: \u201cGo from your country and your kindred and your father’s house.\u201d These are all the things that make life normal and comfortable for Abram. We all like the familiar. Look where you\u2019re sitting; I bet you sat there the last time you were here. I sit over there about four rows back because it\u2019s close to the front without being right in front and it\u2019s easy to get in and out. Some Sundays I think, \u201cWell, let\u2019s sit over there by Bob,\u201d but you know somehow I don\u2019t. It\u2019s not my place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s hard to leave the familiar isn\u2019t it? Have you had to do that? When we moved to Harrisburg two years ago, we came from a home Jacquelyn had made a beacon of warmth and welcome, with great neighbors, a coffee shop I loved and a job I really liked. It was during the pandemic, so we couldn\u2019t visit here much and get comfortable. We bought a house we saw mostly on phone video. We didn\u2019t know anyone. We found the Wegmans out in Mechanicsburg somehow and for a while that was the only grocery store we knew about. Now Abram is being told Go from everything you\u2019ve ever known, your country, your family, the house where you grew up and he never gets to ask, \u201cWhere to?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019re like me, you\u2019ve heard someone talk about how great Abram is because he has the faith to answer God\u2019s call. But the more I thought about this passage this week, the more it occurred to me that it isn\u2019t about Abram and his response\u2014that comes later\u2014it\u2019s all about God and what God is doing. What God is doing is starting over to create that mutually blessing place creation was meant to be. Listen to what God says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\nI will make of you a great nation, and
I will 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 shall be blessed.\u201d <\/p>\n[Gen 12:2-3]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s all about what God is doing. It\u2019s all blessing; even the part about cursing is really a kind of protection. It\u2019s all \u201cI\u201d statements, it\u2019s all promise, it\u2019s all about God\u2019s care and that care is for everyone: \u201c\u2026in you all the families the earth will be blessed.\u201d This isn\u2019t about Abram; this is about what God is doing for all of us, everyone, the whole world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, that\u2019s great, hat\u2019s wonderful, that\u2019s something to celebrate. Except: it starts with that \u201cGo\u201d. And that\u2019s hard for us, isn\u2019t it? We like the familiar; we like what we know. I was the pastor of a church in New England for many years. The meeting house was built in 1848, it sat 300 on the main floor and still had the wrap around balcony called galleries; lots of space for the 25 of us who worshipped there. The pews were numbered because in the old days, people rented their pew. The galleries were originally for servants and children and poor people. They weren\u2019t safe to go up in, but we kept them. We had a lot of furniture from the Victorian era and sometimes I liked to move it around, create a different space. One of the members would sneer about this with the ultimate New England condemnation: \u201cThis is change for the sake of change.\u201d We still use that phrase in our family, it became our private joke. Jacquelyn likes to redecorate; I like things the way they are. Once in a while she improves something and I\u2019ve been known to say, \u201cThis is just change for the sake of change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem is that God doesn\u2019t deal in permanent places. The whole Bible story is about journeys, from Adam and Eve leaving the garden to Abram and Sarai leaving their home to Moses leading God\u2019s people on the Exodus. God is constantly, restlessly, trying to move us toward the fulfillment of that vision of mutual blessing with which creation began. But we like where we are, we like what we know, we like what\u2019s familiar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s the problem in the Gospel reading. Nicodemus is a settled man, a prominent man, a teacher of Israel. He\u2019s courageous enough to come at night to Jesus, trying to figure out what Jesus is up to. But he can\u2019t quite let go of what he thinks he knows, what\u2019s familiar. So Jesus says, \u201cYou have to be born from above.\u201d Now, we\u2019ve translated that into \u201cbeing born again\u201d; we\u2019ve made it about what we do, some phrase we say. That\u2019s not what the text says. What Jesus seems to have in mind isn\u2019t some action but starting over. And the purpose of that starting over? \u201cGod did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.\u201d [John 3:17] That\u2019s not the verse that gets put on signs but that\u2019s the real purpose here, the same purpose God has had from the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re all concerned about the future of churches today. I heard this week that in 2019, the last year for which numbers are available, about 4,500 churches closed. That\u2019s before the pandemic with all its terrible effects. I\u2019m convinced that a part of the reason is that we\u2019ve become so comfortable, we\u2019ve forgotten who we are meant to be, people who are starting over to realize God\u2019s vision of justice and love in a community of mutual blessing and appreciation. We like our familiar places and we\u2019ve made those our destination instead of embracing like, Abram, an unknown future whose hope isn\u2019t its familiarity but God\u2019s promise. We\u2019ve learned to depend on our traditions instead of listening to Psalm 121. There, the psalmist looks to the hills, but says, \u201cMy help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.\u201d [Psalm 121:2] <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mother in law, Marylyn Welling, has gone home to God. When she was with us, she had a little saying we all teased her about. Whenever she went somewhere, on arrival, she would announce, as if in surprise, \u201cWell, we\u2019re here.\u201d We will have found the right path, we will be following Jesus, we will be God\u2019s people when we can embrace a journey to share God\u2019s blessing and feel that in those changes, in those challenges, we\u2019re here. We will get somewhere when the answer to the question, \u201cWhere to?\u201d Is, \u201cGod knows.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ Second Sunday in Lent\/A \u2022 March 5, 2023 Genesis 12:1-4a \u2022 Psalm 121 \u2022John 3:1-17\u00a0 The internet has discovered I\u2019m retired. Every day, I get offers of how to make money in retirement, how to travel in retirement, how to deal with the stress of retirement. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1348"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1351,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348\/revisions\/1351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}