Father Abram and Mother Sarai, Brother Thomas Merton, and Captain Kirk (from Lent 2, February 21, 2021)

Opening Focus:  The prelude music for online worship this Sunday was “Climb Every Mountain” from The Sound of Music:

Climb every mountain, search high and low;

follow every byway, every path you know;

climb every mountain, ford every stream,

follow every rainbow, ‘til you find your dream.

(… or maybe, “God’s dream”?)

When you hear this song, do you feel inspired to climb whatever mountain and ford whatever stream are ahead of you?

Or tired -- maybe even angry, to have one more wretched mountain to climb, and one more stupid stream to ford, when all you wanna do is be able to just lie down in some nice, green pasture for a while, and be refreshed by some cool, clear water?

One of the central images of the season of Lent is journey: journey into and through the wilderness, whatever it may be for you; with God, however you understand God; towards new life, however that may emerge; towards whatever God intends for the good of all life on Earth.  Whether at any moment we find the journey inspiring or tiring.

Opening Prayer

Loving and holy One, 

are you on the other side of the mountain ahead of us,

and that's why we need to climb it?

Are you on the other side of the stream at our feet,

and that's why we need to wade in, get our feet wet, 

and make our way through the waters?

Or are you on the mountain, and in the climbing of it?

Are you in the stream, and in our surrender to it?

 

And is it maybe precisely our tiredness that inspires us,

because it teaches us right down in our bones, in our flesh and in our soul

that whatever good will come of us and our journey

will be done and worked into being, by you -- 

you, creator and lover of all that is,

you, redeemer and healer of all that is weak,

you, living breath within all that lives.

 

Draw us now into your gracious presence.

Help us to hear your word of universal life.

Inspire is to live your life in the life you have given us

in the name of Christ, Lord of all,

and by holiness of you in us all.  Amen. 

Reading: Genesis 17:1-8, 15-16

The reading is a story of God and Abram, our father of faith.

Abram has been travelling with God for a long time, with seemingly little to show for it.  Long before, God told Abram that the land of Canaan would be his new home.  But when Abram reached Canaan, he was unable to settle there.  He kept travelling – all the way to Egypt, where he stayed for a number of years, until now he is finally back in Canaan.

God also told Abram and Sarai they would be parents of a great family and a multitude of nations.  But so far – well on in years, they are still childless.

A number of times along the way, God has repeated the promises.  But what are Abram and Sarai to believe? 

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be trustworthy.  And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.”

Then Abram bowed low before the Lord, with his face to the ground.

And God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram [meaning “exalted ancestor”], but your name shall be Abraham [meaning “ancestor of a multitude”]; for that is what I have made you. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.

“I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.  And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God.”

…

God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai [meaning “princess” in an ancient, almost-forgotten dialect of Hebrew], but Sarah [also meaning “princess” but in a later, more universal version of Hebrew] shall be her name.  I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her.  I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

Sermon

The Trappist monk, Thomas Merton was a spiritual giant of the last century.  He died in 1968, but remains a guide and a mentor – a voice of holy longing and recognition, to many.

Among the 50 books he wrote are classics like The Seven-Storey Mountain, a tale of his journey into spirituality and monastic life; New Seeds of Contemplation, a profound exploration of what it means to be open to God; Thoughts in Solitude, that in the Sixties offered a deep, prophetic critique of North American society that’s still relevant today; and The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton that gives Westerners a glimpse into his ground-breaking exploration of Eastern spiritual traditions and the beginning of serious dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism.

Merton was a pioneer in seeking out and exploring the mystery of God in our time.  He was a spiritual journeyer who over and over answered the call “to boldly go where no man has gone before” and invited others to do the same, well before Star Trek and the starship Enterprise identified it as their mission in 1967, just a year before Merton’s death.

 

And at the same time, Merton also wrote this – a prayer from the mid-Fifties that now is known and cherished simply as The Merton Prayer:

My Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think I am following your will

does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you

does in fact please you.

And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.

 

I hope that I will never do anything

apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this

you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always

though I may seem to be lost

and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear,

for you are ever with me,

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

 

What do you think?  Is it a false humility?  A nice piece of poetic dissembling? 

Or, is this what faith really is?  What openness to God sounds like in real life?  How a life of honest faithfulness feels from the inside? 

Is this what a life of faith was like for Abram?  Abram – or as we know him now, Abraham – is a father of faith to us.   He’s a model of what it means to live open to God, and to God’s good purpose and promise for all life on Earth. 

Abram left old ways and comfortable familiarity behind for the sake of something new and different – something not yet known, something more in tune with God’s real desire for life on Earth than what was known and being practised so far.  He was willing to venture into new territory, try out new solutions, experiment with new ways of doing things, and risk losing everything along the way. 

He and his wife knew the dream was bigger than they could make happen themselves.  They were empty and barren of new life; if anything was going to happen it would have to be God working through them.  But they trusted the wild absurdity of the impossible becoming not only possible, but good.

It makes me think of some of the students I met as a chaplain at Mac – the young man who after a year of engineering said no to his parents’ plans for him, and enrolled in philosophy and religious studies as a sidestep before going eventually into nursing; and the young woman who graduated at the top of her class in French literature and rather than going on to graduate school and a certain career in teaching like her father, went to live as a full-time servant of a handful of mentally challenged adults at a L’Arche house in Trois-Rivieres.

And of others I’ve met along the way – even here at Fifty, who mid-course with family and home and mortgage on their backs have left a secure career spot with benefits and retirement plan, to take on and become something less secure and certain, but a lot closer to what they feel God desires for them.

I’m reminded of the spirit we all showed through the first stage of the pandemic.  In the energy of the crisis and the clarity of vision it offered, there was a lot of talk, a lot of speeches and sermons, and a lot of youtube videos and blogs about learning what we can from the disaster we were in, letting go of what led us to this state, and once the danger was over learning to build “a new normal” together – creating and fashioning new ways of doing society and government, new ways of doing health care and support for people employed in essential services, new ways of doing social support and basic income for all, new ways of doing church and community and family and personal life, new ways of doing nature and care for the Earth, new ways of being an inclusive and global community more in tune with God’s desire for all life on Earth.

We sounded so bold and willing to go where we had not gone before.  But as the pandemic has dragged on and the journey has been extended, I wonder, are we losing our taste for travel?  Are we tiring of novelty, change and uncertainty?  Are we letting go of the call to “a new normal,” and just wanting to “go back to normal” -- even if it’s the old normal?  Better the devil we know, than the dream we don’t?

It’s interesting that when God reassures Abram in the reading today that the journey of faith into new territory is worth it, it’s not the first time Abram has had to be reassured and kept on track.  It’s actually the seventh.  Between the time Abram first set out, and this moment when things actually are closer to getting resolved and clearer, there have been six other occasions when circumstances, difficulties, exhaustion and frustration have made Abram really doubt the journey he’s on and the worth of the promise he’s living towards.

Each time, though, he is open to being reassured.  He is ready to trust again, and keep going.  He is willing to stay the course, and to take whatever next step God puts ahead of him for the good of all life on Earth.

And is this maybe what faith is?  A willingness at critical times, to let go of the devil we know, and let God’s dream be our guide?

And is this what a community of faith is?  Some – the Abraham’s and Merton’s among us – walking the walk of a new normal, and inviting the rest of us to join the journey, encouraging us at critical times of doubt and uncertainty to live towards God’s new future as we are able – one uncertain, doubtful, fearful, hopeful and holy step at a time?

 

Closing Prayer

 

Our Lord God,

we have no idea where we are going.

We do not see the road ahead of us.

We cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do we really know ourselves,

and the fact that we think we are following your will

does not mean that we are actually doing so.

But we believe that the desire to please you

does in fact please you.

And we hope that we have that desire

in all that we are doing.

 

We hope that we will never do anything

apart from that desire.

And we know that if we do this

you will lead us by the right road,

though we may know nothing about it.

Therefore will we trust you always

though we may seem to be lost

and in the shadow of death.

We will not fear,

for you are ever with us,

and you will never leave us to face our perils alone.

Amen.