Focusing
Why am I here? This is the question at the heart of our worship and reflection today.
Yeah, I know the joke about this not being a big philosophical question, but just a daily wondering faced by someone my age who get ups from where I am in the house, goes down the basement or upstairs, and when I get there, stands and wonders “why am I here?”
Today, though, it is the BIG question I have in mind. Because Lent – when we honour it as a season of rest before the busyness of spring, is a time to sit with the big questions.
Like “why am I here?” Is there a purpose and a meaning to my life beyond just myself? If so, what is it? And how do I know it? Can I know it?
And “why am I here?” Why this place? Do I even know all that this place is, what it brings me, and what it wants to bring me to? And how do I know? How do I know why I’m here rather than somewhere else?
Scripture Reading: Genesis 11:27 – 12:10
Today we read about Abraham – spiritual father to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Abram is a an called by God to be a travelin’ man on a long and winding road. The places named in the story that are not familiar to us, so a few words of explanation are offered in the reading of the story.
Worthy of note, is that it is Abram’s father – a man named Terah, who actually gets Abram’s journey started, although there is no record of Abram’s father doing this at the call of God.
This is the account of Terah’s family line.
Terah was the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran, and they lived in the city of Ur in the land of the Chaldeans [in modern-day Iraq]. Haran had a son named Lot, and while Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur. Abram and Nahor both married – Abram to Sarai, and Nahor to Milkah. Sarai was childless; she was not able to conceive.
Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, and Abram’s wife Sarai, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan [about 2000 kms away, as the camel walks]. But when they came to Harran, [only half-way to Canaan, in southeastern Turkey], they stopped and settled there. Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Harran.
And the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country, from your people and from your father’s household, to the land I will show you. I will make of you 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. He has 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, they set out for the land of Canaan [still almost 1000 kms away], and they arrived there.
Abram traveled through the land as far as great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram continued toward the Negev [at the far southern end of Canaan]. Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.
Reflection
This story of a family’s journey from the city of Ur in the land of the Chaldeans – known today as Iraq, and back then as The Fertile Crescent, to the land of Canaan, is the founding story of Jews, Christians as Muslims as a particular people of God in the world. There is a lot to it – a lot of things top be gleaned from it, and a lot of questions to be asked of it. Without trying to get too far into everything about this story, there are three things I want to say about it today.
The first thing is to notice that this great founding journey was actually not begun by Abram, but by his father, Terah. It was Terah who first packed up the family possessions, took his son Abram and his wife Sara, as well as Lot, his orphaned grandson, to set out for Canaan over 3000 kms away by camel route.
And we don’t know why. There’s no record of a call of God? Was he just restless? Were things not going well for him in Ur? Were there tales of a land of opportunity out west? Whatever the reason – and maybe God makes good use of all kinds of human motivation, he packed up what part of his family was portable, and set out for Canaan.
But he didn’t get there. A little over half-way, when he reached the city of Harran in what’s now southeastern Turkey, he and everyone with him stopped, settled down and made a new life and a new place in the world for themselves there. And it was only after Terah died that Abram then felt a call of God to pack up his stuff, leave behind the rest that his father had built up in Harran, and continue the journey that had been begun.
I wonder what that was like for Abram? To pack up (again), and leave behind the new home his father had found and built for them? To leave (again) for something else in some other place?
I wonder, what’s it like for us, what’s it like for you, at some point in your life, to pack up and leave behind the home that you’ve known – that’s been built for you, or that you’ve even built yourself, to go find something else somewhere else – that, of all things, you believe God is calling you to?
Second thing: Abram made it all the way to Canaan, but did you notice that when he got there he didn’t right away stay and settle down? The story puts it this way: when Abram got to Canaan, the Canaanites were in the land, and even when he was assured by God this was the place God had for him, Abram kept on going. He took the time to build an altar to the Lord – two in fact, and then kept on going to the Negev, an arid region in the very south of Canaan, and then during a time of severe drought, moved on even further well past Canaan to Egypt where he lived for a while.
Let’s take just a minute to put this into context for ourselves. Think: Europeans coming to North America, unfamiliar and uninhabited by people they know. Think: Columbus, Cabot, Champlain, New France and the Selkirk settlers. Think: Manifest Destiny and the American Dream south of the border, and north of the border westward expansion, the CPR, the North-West Mounted Police and the Christian church all helping to make over continent into a new Dominion from sea to sea to sea.
Abram, though, was in no rush to claim his prize and lay hold of God’s promise. He trusted God’s good will would be done in God’s own way and God’s own time. Even if it wasn’t done in his lifetime, and in a way that he would not know and would not prosper from himself.
And in fact, when we follow the story through, the land really does not become the land of Abram’s family until the time of Joshua, some many generations – even centuries, later. And even then only after the children of Israel are enslaved for some time in Egypt, and God hears their cry and leads them out from there to this land, specifically so they can be free to create a society of God’s justice among unjust empires.
And, reading further, we also see that when they fail to do that – and fail miserably, the land is taken from them and they become exiled and enslaved again for a time – God’s time.
Abram was not a name-it-and-claim-it kind of guy; he didn’t live with a sense of entitlement. He lived instead with a spirit of enlistment, just feeling blessed to have his part to play in a greater work far beyond himself that God was doing for the well-being of all.
And maybe it was because the promise God gave him of a place for his family to be, was not just for the good of him and his family. I will bless you, and make of you a blessing for others, God said. Through you and the part that you play, my blessing will flow – my good will, will come to be, for all the world’s well-being.
What’s it like to live not with a sense of entitlement for yourself, but with a spirit of enlistment for the well-being of others? Of having a part to play in a purpose of God greater than your own well-being, and to give yourself and all you have to it? To let the story of your family and your family’s well-being, be intentionally connected to, and part of God’s big story of the well-being of all the world?
Which brings us to a third thing: what if the place to which God leads us to be a blessing to others for the well-being of all, is not a piece of land and of geography for us to settle down on? But is a piece of history to be part of? A movement or a kind of action or activism that helps to reshape the world in our time in some good way, that God calls us to give ourselves to? A commitment to some way of living, being or doing that serves the well-being not just of ourselves and our families, but of all the families of the world – or even just of our part of it?
Follow me, God says. Follow the leads and nudges I give you, and I will make of you and of your life, a blessing for others. Be aware of the knock on your door; it may be me inviting you to come out and join one of today’s journeys towards a new world.
There are so many things it could be about. So many different pathways and journeys that God is inviting us and others to commit ourselves to. Just read, or listen to the news of the day and let it sink in. Be open to the pain and the suffering of others. Feel the sorrow of the earth. Be attentive to what things beyond you, break your heart and make you wish someone would help to do something about it. Take time to look at what you have, and wonder how God might use it for some good greater purpose, if only it was given to God to use.
And that’s what this third point is. It’s not about me or you or anyone else quickly naming and claiming what I or you or we should do. It’s not about me or anyone else trying to tell you what God’s call on your life really is.
It's about taking and making time for the asking of the question, “why am I here”” and for the openness required of each of us to find and live into an answer.
And how do we do that?
I remember back in theology-school days, one of the big names was a man named Sam Keen, who talked about “following your bliss” – maybe a forerunner of Marie Kondo who teaches us to follow our joy. And there’s certainly something to that – to find our life’s meaning in what brings us joy. To live by and in an ethic of gratitude and joyfulness.
On the other hand, I am also swayed by bits of what I have read recently from a book called Let Heartbreak Be Your Guide – the wisdom being that we become deeply and sacredly human when we have the courage and the faith to sit with the sufferings of the world and of others, and to embrace the hard feelings of grief, sorrow, anger, lament, and sympathy for others. About choosing to ponder and to wonder about God’s good will for the world, at work in some way for the world, and our part in it. To live by and into an ethic of sympathy and compassion.
And maybe the point is that it’s both the joy and the sorrow and anything else that helps open us – truly open our hearts and our minds, our lives and our living – to the wonder and the wounds of others, of all the world, and of God. And as we sit with that -- with the wonder and the wounds – it’s about trusting that God will lead ... when we are ready to be led.
Lent is a season for sitting with the big questions -- questions like “why am I here?” It’s a way of becoming ready for the season of planting, and growing and harvesting that will come.
No comments:
Post a Comment