A Story to Tell: The Second Call
06/14/09
Pastor Marji
Miller
Let’s talk about calling. Cell phones have taken over our existence, right? I work in customer service. Lots of emphasis on giving really good service. And that’s a good thing. But how about some lessons in courtesy for customers? Amazing. People walk up to a teller, who is trying really hard to be friendly, helpful. Cell phone tucked under their chin, they grunt at the teller, make some kind of hand gestures which they apparently think lets the teller know what they want to do, and keep babbling on the phone. Never mind that there are people waiting behind them, and the teller really can’t do anything until they can break away from their chattering and explain what they want done.
And I’m not alone in thinking this way.
Maybe we’re too busy talking to hear the only call that really matters?
What have we talked about in the story? God created by his word. He, in the words of The Story – “declared it to be “very good.”. God simply had to speak to make it happen. The creation story from The Message. This is on your notetaker too.
First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss. God spoke: “Light!” And light appeared. God saw that light was good and separated light from dark. God named the light Day, he named the dark Night. It was evening, it was morning— Day One. Genesis 1:1-5 The Message
The first verse, top of the notetaker: calls into being things that were not …..
And, God continued:
He spoke, “Sky!” and there was sky.
God spoke to the water: “Separate!
God spoke to the earth: “Earth, green up!
God spoke into thin air: “Lights! Come out!
God spoke to the oceans: “Swarm, Ocean, with fish and all sea life!
...calls into being things that were not …..
Then we come to us.
God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, And, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.” God created human beings; he created them godlike, Reflecting God’s nature. He created them male and female. God blessed them: “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.” Genesis 1:26-28 The Message
God spoke “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible! calls into being things that were not …..
He spoke. He said. He called………. the world into being. Creation was the first call.
God intended a good world. Unfortunately, the world he called into being didn’t go according to his plan.
The most special of God's creation, human beings, proved to be the problem. God had made people a little less than the angels, from The Story again, in his image, with ability to reason, relate, love and rule. With the freedom to choose to live as God called them to live. Last week we talked about which way the choice went……. The Creation Story ended on a real low point.
But, the story gets worse. It tells us about the spread of violence and greed: From the beginning, we human beings have disappointed God by – the Story - choosing to become independent - from God - and setting ourselves up as our own gods. In addition to spiritual death, the result of that Fall has been self-destruction, injustice and violence in all dimensions of human life. And it tells us about God’s increasingly severe judgment on that disregard of his will.
The final story in Genesis 11 is the story of the Tower of Babel, when human beings set out to storm the heights of heaven and make a name for themselves. God confused their language and scattered them all over the earth. This marks an obvious “End,” another real low point in The Story. So, the reader – or the hearer - is left with the question, is that uncompleted tower God’s last word? {Are we doomed to be isolated from each other forever? Are we all cut off from our God forever? Are we going to go through life with no purpose? And die without even knowing what it was supposed to have been like?}
No!! There’s more to the story!! But why? Did those rotten human beings deserve a sequel? There’s only one reason there’s more to the story. There’s more because, see, God had a big problem. That problem was – and is - human disobedience, complicated by the fact that God loves humanity passionately. So he initiated restoration projects.
God wasn’t through calling. Sixteen or seventeen centuries before Jesus, a nomadic family, living Mesopotamia (Iraq) migrated to Canaan (Israel). To some people, OK, most people, this is a non-event. As Christians, however, we see this as one of history's most pivotal events.
The quote on your notetaker,,, ………….the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not. Romans 4:17 TNIV that was about Abraham and Sarah. The full verse, Romans 4:17
As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He (Abraham) is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not. Romans 4:17 TNIV
The First Call was creation. The Second Call was to Sarah and Abraham. And their descendants. Genesis tells us the God who creates call. The second call was a re-creation of what he always intended for us.
Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive. Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out
from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Harran. The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. Genesis 11:30-12:5 TNIV
Abram and Sarai didn’t have children. That is how they entered the story. Someone to carry on the family… that was everything to people then! If there was no one to pass on the family name, the family identity, to remember them, life had been lived in vain. It all ended when you were put in the ground.
Up until that moment, there had been nothing else special about Sarai and Abram - I’m going to call them by their more familiar names – Sarah and Abraham, OK? No reason for God to chose them. EXCEPT that Sarah was not able to conceive… Game over. So, to these two people – Paul in Romans called them as good as dead - God made his demands. Note that this is not an invitation. It was simply, “Go!”
Of course, there were promises associated with the demands, but don’t miss that they are insane promises.
I will make you a great nation.
I will make your name great.
Without an heir this just wasn’t possible. But, crazy or not, it was the best offer they had. To go presented, at least, possibilities, so they took a chance on this crazy promise. Made by this crazy God. Could he really pull this off? The only possibility of a future – only possibility of a hope - was in following the call. The call of the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not…
That life would be different – following this crazy God to who-knows-where. They’d be uprooted, replanted, rearranged, reidentified. And, this new covenantal relationship would extend beyond them! All their future offspring would be included. But, of course, there were no offspring. So, if the promise was to be fulfilled, there had to be an heir. Sarah had to conceive. There had to be an end to the future-less-ness!! Is that a word? It is now.
But faith would lead to more than an heir. It would lead to more than being landowners. Faith would lead to being blessed AND to being a blessing. Listen to the words, “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
Faith has always been a risky business. For everyone involved. God knew that to straighten out this problem, he was going to have to take some risk. We get all excited about Abraham’s faith. About Sarah’s faith. They trusted. They went. We are impressed. BUT, the really good news isn’t that Sarah and Abraham believed in Yahweh. The really good news is that Yahweh believed in Sarah and Abraham! God took a risk, another risk, by giving humanity another chance. And even when they continued to mess up, the relationship held!!!
Again and again, as we follow the story of Yahweh’s people, we’ll see how much this risk did cost God. Book of Judges: over and over – it’s the theme of the entire book.
Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, now that Ehud was dead. So the Lord sold them into the hands of Jabin king of Canaan. Because he had nine hundred chariots fitted with iron and had cruelly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years, they cried to the Lord for help. Judges 4:1-3 TNIV
He forgave and restored. But they still didn’t get it and the cycle repeated. And repeated. And repeated. And, it didn’t end at with the Judges. Read the Samuels, Kings. Read the prophets. God rages at their unfaithfulness in Ezekiel. With the pain of a betrayed lover. God describes finding Israel as an abandoned child, thrown out at birth, to die in her own blood. He took her in and cared for her. She grew up and I made a covenant with you, says the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine. Ezekiel 16:8 NLT
He dressed her in beautiful clothes, gave her everything, made her a queen, known all over the world for her beauty.
“But you thought your fame and beauty were your own. So you gave yourself as a prostitute to every man who came along. Your beauty was theirs for the asking. Ezekiel 16:15 NLT
And we can hear the pain in Yahweh’s voice:
“Then you took your sons and daughters—the children you had borne to me—and sacrificed them to your gods. Was your prostitution not enough? Must you also slaughter my children by sacrificing them to idols? In all your years of adultery and detestable sin, you have not once remembered the days long ago when you lay naked in a field, kicking about in your own blood. Ezekiel 16:20-22 NLT
And how about this from Hosea? More pain for the God of the Second Call.
“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt. But the more I called to him, the farther he moved from me, offering sacrifices to the images of Baal and burning incense to idols. I myself taught Israel how to walk, leading him along by the hand. But he doesn’t know or even care that it was I who took care of him. I led Israel along with my ropes of kindness and love. I lifted the yoke from his neck, and I myself stooped to feed him.” Hosea 11:1-4 NLT
Yahweh was certainly taking a risk with Sarah and Abraham. People had hurt him already – remember the garden – but he was willing to try again. So, he choose – for his restoration project – the Futureless. But they had to move.
We, also, have to move to have a future. Instead of barrenness, we, also, are to go and bless. This was, and is, a package deal. Relief from futurelessness comes only with the risk of moving into God’s future.
He still believes in us, Valley Grace. We are called!!
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1 Peter 2:9-10 TNIV
Now, we might look at the promises and not see them as relevant to 21st century, north Americans. After all, God isn’t likely to offer us a land of our own. Maybe a house with a yard, or, for the really ambitious, a few acres to raise some vegetables and critters, but not a land. Having a huge family isn’t a dream most of us share. We like the “blessings” part, of course, but those – the land, the lots of descendants - were the blessings!! So, is this just a nice old story?
It is an old story, but, at the same time, it’s an always-new story. The story is so relevant for us as a continuation of God’s chosen people. God was offering Abraham and Sarah three things that do apply to us.
First, God offers a community to live in. God called them to be his people. Yes, they would hurt him, but they would love him as well as they could, obey him some of the time, be his witness to the world - sometimes with less than optimal results. The members of his community would have him, and each other. This community that would result in a blessing for all the world was his first Restoration Project. With the land and the heir, they would become a great nation. No more being alone. No more isolation. People for protection, for support, to love and to love them back. And all this centered around the God of the Promise. The way God had intended relationships to work in the first place.
He offers us a community, as well. We’ll hurt him sometimes, but we’re called to love him, obey him and be his witness to the world. We’re still the Restoration Project. That’s because of our past. BUT, we’re also the Pilot Project, remember? That’s our present! We’re the Pilot Project for the Kingdom of God – the way God always intended humankind to be.
Second, Yahweh offered them a future - a purpose to live for. Without children, there had been no future. For us, it’s not all about children, but it is about something that doesn’t end with us. Something that goes on, that comes from being part of something that will have meaning now, and for all time. Something that will grow and develop. With promise. With potential. Aliveness instead of futurelessness.
When we answer the call, we become part of something so much bigger than ourselves that will last forever. God was offering them meaning and purpose in their lives. Do 21st century Westerners struggle with that one???? Why are we here? Do we matter? Valley Grace, we’re here for the world! As heirs of Abraham and Sarah, as their spiritual offspring, as members of their community of faith, we are a blessing to the world.
And the third thing he offers us: In addition to a community to belong to, and a purpose to live for, he offers us a partnership to live out.
God has chosen us to work with him. How does that work? What does it mean that God believes in us? He is willing to take a chance on us. On more than one level. “Give us a second chance” is what we think of most readily, and that is the greatest gift we could ever have. But God believes in us in another way, also, maybe a little less welcome: God believes we can make some of our own decisions.
What did Sarah and Abraham do to be a blessing? Pretty vague isn’t it? “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” God didn’t give them a lot of specifics, and he didn’t micromanage them. They continued to live their lives. Not a record of a lot of instruction. Or intervention. No reason to think they got daily directions. They were committed and they lived their lives where God put them. He used that. Lives will have dramatic moments, but mostly life is just daily.
It gets pretty pointed at Sinai, but Jesus yanks back the certainty when he said:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40 TNIV
Very weak on the How part. Ask How, and Jesus responds with the Story of the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son. If you’re looking for a checklist – OK, exactly just who IS my neighbor? Or how many times, exactly, do you expect me to forgive? Don’t look to Jesus. He wants it all, and he isn’t very detailed about what that means.
When we pray for direction and don’t get it, does it mean God doesn’t care about us? No. Does it mean we aren’t praying right? Does it mean we aren’t listening carefully enough? Not necessarily. It may mean that God can use you in either of those jobs. He can use you married or single. With or without moving, buying a house, getting a goldfish, wearing blue pants instead of brown ones. God believes in us, he’s willing to take some chances with us. We can be blessings in a LOT of ways!! Even when it comes to how to be obedient, God refuses to be pinned down. This future and this relationship are amazingly open-ended and flexible. There are a lot of ways to makes disciples. And a lot of ways to love.
Now, you may be thinking, humans hadn’t been able to be this community before, live out this purpose before, be faithful partners before. Why does God believe in us? Why does he think we could do it now?? This is only part three! Tune in next week for part four!! But, for now, realize the future hope was in following the call. And, God still isn’t through calling!! Uncertainty? Yes! Crazy? Yes! But there is only one thing we really need to know when God Calls us:
Then you will call out, and the Lord will answer.
You will cry out, and he will say, ‘“Here I am.” Isaiah 58:9NCV
He may be crazy, but that is the choice he has made. And he sacrificed his only son to that choice. God believes in us.
And that - “here I am” -will give us strength and courage and creativity and newness while we wait for the Last Call. When what God wants done will be done - perfectly. Once again it will be God’s call!
Wait for him. Watch for him. Take a chance for him. He believes in you.
Let’s talk about calling. Cell phones have taken over our existence, right? I work in customer service. Lots of emphasis on giving really good service. And that’s a good thing. But how about some lessons in courtesy for customers? Amazing. People walk up to a teller, who is trying really hard to be friendly, helpful. Cell phone tucked under their chin, they grunt at the teller, make some kind of hand gestures which they apparently think lets the teller know what they want to do, and keep babbling on the phone. Never mind that there are people waiting behind them, and the teller really can’t do anything until they can break away from their chattering and explain what they want done.
And I’m not alone in thinking this way.
- 87 percent of the people surveyed said annoying cell phone use was the bad behavior they encountered the most. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 3 percent of drivers are talking on hand-held cell phones at any given time.
- 38 percent of 2,119 people surveyed said it was fine to use the cell phone in the bathroom.
- 15 percent of Americans have interrupted sex to answer a cell phone (whereas zero percent have interrupted a cell phone call to have sex).
Maybe we’re too busy talking to hear the only call that really matters?
What have we talked about in the story? God created by his word. He, in the words of The Story – “declared it to be “very good.”. God simply had to speak to make it happen. The creation story from The Message. This is on your notetaker too.
First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss. God spoke: “Light!” And light appeared. God saw that light was good and separated light from dark. God named the light Day, he named the dark Night. It was evening, it was morning— Day One. Genesis 1:1-5 The Message
The first verse, top of the notetaker: calls into being things that were not …..
And, God continued:
He spoke, “Sky!” and there was sky.
God spoke to the water: “Separate!
God spoke to the earth: “Earth, green up!
God spoke into thin air: “Lights! Come out!
God spoke to the oceans: “Swarm, Ocean, with fish and all sea life!
...calls into being things that were not …..
Then we come to us.
God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, And, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.” God created human beings; he created them godlike, Reflecting God’s nature. He created them male and female. God blessed them: “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air, for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.” Genesis 1:26-28 The Message
God spoke “Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible! calls into being things that were not …..
He spoke. He said. He called………. the world into being. Creation was the first call.
God intended a good world. Unfortunately, the world he called into being didn’t go according to his plan.
The most special of God's creation, human beings, proved to be the problem. God had made people a little less than the angels, from The Story again, in his image, with ability to reason, relate, love and rule. With the freedom to choose to live as God called them to live. Last week we talked about which way the choice went……. The Creation Story ended on a real low point.
But, the story gets worse. It tells us about the spread of violence and greed: From the beginning, we human beings have disappointed God by – the Story - choosing to become independent - from God - and setting ourselves up as our own gods. In addition to spiritual death, the result of that Fall has been self-destruction, injustice and violence in all dimensions of human life. And it tells us about God’s increasingly severe judgment on that disregard of his will.
The final story in Genesis 11 is the story of the Tower of Babel, when human beings set out to storm the heights of heaven and make a name for themselves. God confused their language and scattered them all over the earth. This marks an obvious “End,” another real low point in The Story. So, the reader – or the hearer - is left with the question, is that uncompleted tower God’s last word? {Are we doomed to be isolated from each other forever? Are we all cut off from our God forever? Are we going to go through life with no purpose? And die without even knowing what it was supposed to have been like?}
No!! There’s more to the story!! But why? Did those rotten human beings deserve a sequel? There’s only one reason there’s more to the story. There’s more because, see, God had a big problem. That problem was – and is - human disobedience, complicated by the fact that God loves humanity passionately. So he initiated restoration projects.
God wasn’t through calling. Sixteen or seventeen centuries before Jesus, a nomadic family, living Mesopotamia (Iraq) migrated to Canaan (Israel). To some people, OK, most people, this is a non-event. As Christians, however, we see this as one of history's most pivotal events.
The quote on your notetaker,,, ………….the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not. Romans 4:17 TNIV that was about Abraham and Sarah. The full verse, Romans 4:17
As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He (Abraham) is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not. Romans 4:17 TNIV
The First Call was creation. The Second Call was to Sarah and Abraham. And their descendants. Genesis tells us the God who creates call. The second call was a re-creation of what he always intended for us.
Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive. Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out
from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Harran. The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. Genesis 11:30-12:5 TNIV
Abram and Sarai didn’t have children. That is how they entered the story. Someone to carry on the family… that was everything to people then! If there was no one to pass on the family name, the family identity, to remember them, life had been lived in vain. It all ended when you were put in the ground.
Up until that moment, there had been nothing else special about Sarai and Abram - I’m going to call them by their more familiar names – Sarah and Abraham, OK? No reason for God to chose them. EXCEPT that Sarah was not able to conceive… Game over. So, to these two people – Paul in Romans called them as good as dead - God made his demands. Note that this is not an invitation. It was simply, “Go!”
Of course, there were promises associated with the demands, but don’t miss that they are insane promises.
I will make you a great nation.
I will make your name great.
Without an heir this just wasn’t possible. But, crazy or not, it was the best offer they had. To go presented, at least, possibilities, so they took a chance on this crazy promise. Made by this crazy God. Could he really pull this off? The only possibility of a future – only possibility of a hope - was in following the call. The call of the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not…
That life would be different – following this crazy God to who-knows-where. They’d be uprooted, replanted, rearranged, reidentified. And, this new covenantal relationship would extend beyond them! All their future offspring would be included. But, of course, there were no offspring. So, if the promise was to be fulfilled, there had to be an heir. Sarah had to conceive. There had to be an end to the future-less-ness!! Is that a word? It is now.
But faith would lead to more than an heir. It would lead to more than being landowners. Faith would lead to being blessed AND to being a blessing. Listen to the words, “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
Faith has always been a risky business. For everyone involved. God knew that to straighten out this problem, he was going to have to take some risk. We get all excited about Abraham’s faith. About Sarah’s faith. They trusted. They went. We are impressed. BUT, the really good news isn’t that Sarah and Abraham believed in Yahweh. The really good news is that Yahweh believed in Sarah and Abraham! God took a risk, another risk, by giving humanity another chance. And even when they continued to mess up, the relationship held!!!
Again and again, as we follow the story of Yahweh’s people, we’ll see how much this risk did cost God. Book of Judges: over and over – it’s the theme of the entire book.
Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, now that Ehud was dead. So the Lord sold them into the hands of Jabin king of Canaan. Because he had nine hundred chariots fitted with iron and had cruelly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years, they cried to the Lord for help. Judges 4:1-3 TNIV
He forgave and restored. But they still didn’t get it and the cycle repeated. And repeated. And repeated. And, it didn’t end at with the Judges. Read the Samuels, Kings. Read the prophets. God rages at their unfaithfulness in Ezekiel. With the pain of a betrayed lover. God describes finding Israel as an abandoned child, thrown out at birth, to die in her own blood. He took her in and cared for her. She grew up and I made a covenant with you, says the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine. Ezekiel 16:8 NLT
He dressed her in beautiful clothes, gave her everything, made her a queen, known all over the world for her beauty.
“But you thought your fame and beauty were your own. So you gave yourself as a prostitute to every man who came along. Your beauty was theirs for the asking. Ezekiel 16:15 NLT
And we can hear the pain in Yahweh’s voice:
“Then you took your sons and daughters—the children you had borne to me—and sacrificed them to your gods. Was your prostitution not enough? Must you also slaughter my children by sacrificing them to idols? In all your years of adultery and detestable sin, you have not once remembered the days long ago when you lay naked in a field, kicking about in your own blood. Ezekiel 16:20-22 NLT
And how about this from Hosea? More pain for the God of the Second Call.
“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt. But the more I called to him, the farther he moved from me, offering sacrifices to the images of Baal and burning incense to idols. I myself taught Israel how to walk, leading him along by the hand. But he doesn’t know or even care that it was I who took care of him. I led Israel along with my ropes of kindness and love. I lifted the yoke from his neck, and I myself stooped to feed him.” Hosea 11:1-4 NLT
Yahweh was certainly taking a risk with Sarah and Abraham. People had hurt him already – remember the garden – but he was willing to try again. So, he choose – for his restoration project – the Futureless. But they had to move.
We, also, have to move to have a future. Instead of barrenness, we, also, are to go and bless. This was, and is, a package deal. Relief from futurelessness comes only with the risk of moving into God’s future.
He still believes in us, Valley Grace. We are called!!
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1 Peter 2:9-10 TNIV
Now, we might look at the promises and not see them as relevant to 21st century, north Americans. After all, God isn’t likely to offer us a land of our own. Maybe a house with a yard, or, for the really ambitious, a few acres to raise some vegetables and critters, but not a land. Having a huge family isn’t a dream most of us share. We like the “blessings” part, of course, but those – the land, the lots of descendants - were the blessings!! So, is this just a nice old story?
It is an old story, but, at the same time, it’s an always-new story. The story is so relevant for us as a continuation of God’s chosen people. God was offering Abraham and Sarah three things that do apply to us.
First, God offers a community to live in. God called them to be his people. Yes, they would hurt him, but they would love him as well as they could, obey him some of the time, be his witness to the world - sometimes with less than optimal results. The members of his community would have him, and each other. This community that would result in a blessing for all the world was his first Restoration Project. With the land and the heir, they would become a great nation. No more being alone. No more isolation. People for protection, for support, to love and to love them back. And all this centered around the God of the Promise. The way God had intended relationships to work in the first place.
He offers us a community, as well. We’ll hurt him sometimes, but we’re called to love him, obey him and be his witness to the world. We’re still the Restoration Project. That’s because of our past. BUT, we’re also the Pilot Project, remember? That’s our present! We’re the Pilot Project for the Kingdom of God – the way God always intended humankind to be.
Second, Yahweh offered them a future - a purpose to live for. Without children, there had been no future. For us, it’s not all about children, but it is about something that doesn’t end with us. Something that goes on, that comes from being part of something that will have meaning now, and for all time. Something that will grow and develop. With promise. With potential. Aliveness instead of futurelessness.
When we answer the call, we become part of something so much bigger than ourselves that will last forever. God was offering them meaning and purpose in their lives. Do 21st century Westerners struggle with that one???? Why are we here? Do we matter? Valley Grace, we’re here for the world! As heirs of Abraham and Sarah, as their spiritual offspring, as members of their community of faith, we are a blessing to the world.
And the third thing he offers us: In addition to a community to belong to, and a purpose to live for, he offers us a partnership to live out.
God has chosen us to work with him. How does that work? What does it mean that God believes in us? He is willing to take a chance on us. On more than one level. “Give us a second chance” is what we think of most readily, and that is the greatest gift we could ever have. But God believes in us in another way, also, maybe a little less welcome: God believes we can make some of our own decisions.
What did Sarah and Abraham do to be a blessing? Pretty vague isn’t it? “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” God didn’t give them a lot of specifics, and he didn’t micromanage them. They continued to live their lives. Not a record of a lot of instruction. Or intervention. No reason to think they got daily directions. They were committed and they lived their lives where God put them. He used that. Lives will have dramatic moments, but mostly life is just daily.
It gets pretty pointed at Sinai, but Jesus yanks back the certainty when he said:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40 TNIV
Very weak on the How part. Ask How, and Jesus responds with the Story of the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son. If you’re looking for a checklist – OK, exactly just who IS my neighbor? Or how many times, exactly, do you expect me to forgive? Don’t look to Jesus. He wants it all, and he isn’t very detailed about what that means.
When we pray for direction and don’t get it, does it mean God doesn’t care about us? No. Does it mean we aren’t praying right? Does it mean we aren’t listening carefully enough? Not necessarily. It may mean that God can use you in either of those jobs. He can use you married or single. With or without moving, buying a house, getting a goldfish, wearing blue pants instead of brown ones. God believes in us, he’s willing to take some chances with us. We can be blessings in a LOT of ways!! Even when it comes to how to be obedient, God refuses to be pinned down. This future and this relationship are amazingly open-ended and flexible. There are a lot of ways to makes disciples. And a lot of ways to love.
Now, you may be thinking, humans hadn’t been able to be this community before, live out this purpose before, be faithful partners before. Why does God believe in us? Why does he think we could do it now?? This is only part three! Tune in next week for part four!! But, for now, realize the future hope was in following the call. And, God still isn’t through calling!! Uncertainty? Yes! Crazy? Yes! But there is only one thing we really need to know when God Calls us:
Then you will call out, and the Lord will answer.
You will cry out, and he will say, ‘“Here I am.” Isaiah 58:9NCV
He may be crazy, but that is the choice he has made. And he sacrificed his only son to that choice. God believes in us.
And that - “here I am” -will give us strength and courage and creativity and newness while we wait for the Last Call. When what God wants done will be done - perfectly. Once again it will be God’s call!
Wait for him. Watch for him. Take a chance for him. He believes in you.