Fr. Dave's Thoughts - February 7, 2025
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. (Genesis 12:1-2)
Dear friends,
As we approach our annual meeting this Sunday, I want us to look closely at the text I have written out for us above. It is the story of the very beginning of our spiritual journey from the book of Genesis. Brian McLaren in his book, We Make the Road by Walking, the book that Johnna is looking at with you on the fourth Tuesday of each month, writes about the journey that Abram and Sara are about to embark on. I want to use my blog this week to highlight Brian’s thoughts on this text.
While we plot ways to use God to get blessings for ourselves, God stays focused on the big picture of blessing the world – which includes blessing us in the process. You see this pattern unfold when God chooses a man named Abram and a woman named Sara. They are from a prominent family in a great ancient city-state known as Ur, one of the first ancient Middle Eastern civilizations. Like all civilizations, Ur has a dirty little secret: its affluence is built on violence, oppression, and exploitation. Behind its beautiful façade, its upper classes live each day in luxury, while its masses slave away in squalor.
God tells this couple to leave their life of privilege in this great civilization. He sends them out into the unknown as wanderers and adventurers. No longer will Abram and Sara have the armies and wealth and comforts of Ur at their disposal. All they will have is a promise – that God will be with them and show them a better way. From now on, they will make a new road by walking.
God’s promise comes in two parts. In the first part, Abram and Sara will be blessed. They will become a great nation, and God will bless those who bless them and curse those who curse them. That is the kind of promise we might expect, but it’s the second part that is surprising.
Not only will they be blessed, but they will be a blessing. Not only will their family become a great nation, but all the families on Earth will be blessed through them.
This is a unique identity indeed. It means the children of Abram and Sara will be a unique us in relation to all the other thems of the world. No, their identity will not be us at the top of the pyramid and them at the bottom, or vice versa. Nor will their identity be us assimilated into them, or us assimilating them into us. Nor will it be us against them, us apart from them, or us in spite of them. No, Abram and Sara’s unique identity will be us for them, us with them, us for the benefit and blessing of all.
That “otherly” identity – us for the common good – wasn’t intended only for Abram and Sara’s clan. It is the kind of identity that is best for every individual, every culture, every nation, every religion. It says, “We’re special!” But it also says, “They’re special, too.” It says, “God has a place for us and a plan for us.” But it also says, “God has a place and a plan for others, too.” When we drift from that high calling and start thinking only of me, only of our clan or our nation or our religion, our senses of identity begins to go stale and sour, even toxic.
So, the story of Abram and Sara’s unique identity tells us something powerful about God’s identity, too: God is not the tribal deity of one group of “chosen” people. God is not for us and against all others. God is for us and for them, too. God loves everyone everywhere, no exceptions.
And this story tells us something about true faith. Faith is stepping off the map of what is known and making a new road by walking into the unknown. It is responding to God’s call to adventure, stepping out on a quest for goodness, trusting that the status quo isn’t as good as it gets, believing a promise that a better life is possible…. True faith is about joining God in God’s love for everyone. It is about seeking goodness with others, not at the expense of others. True faith is seeing a bigger circle in which we are all connected, all included, all loved, all blessed.
Sadly, for many people, faith has been reduced to a list. For some, it’s a list of beliefs: ideas or statements that we have to memorize and assent to if we want to be blessed. For others it is a list of do’s and don’ts: ritual rules that we have to perform to earn the status of being blessed. But Abram didn’t have much in the way of beliefs, rules or rituals. He had no Bibles, doctrines, temples, commandments, or ceremonies. For him, true faith was simply trusting a promise of being blessed to be a blessing. It wasn’t a way of being religious: it was a way of being alive.
And so this story not only tells us something about God’s true identity and about the true nature of faith, it also tells us about true aliveness. True aliveness comes when we receive blessings and become a blessing to others. It’s a blessing where God plots goodness for all.
Like us, Abram and Sara will lose sight of this vision of aliveness sometimes. But even when they lose faith, God will remain faithful. Through their mistakes and failures, they will keep learning and growing, discovering more and more of God’s desire to overflow with abundant blessing for all. [i]
I really appreciate how Brian has interpreted this text. We are blessed to be a blessing. That is a solid truth of the spiritual life. As we come to our annual meeting this Sunday, I want us to keep this in mind. But I also want us to understand that God may be calling us away from what we have been comfortable with all these years, what we have known and even loved in order to follow a new path, a new road, a road that we will only discover by walking it together. If God is the one calling us, then we can be assured that new blessings surely await us. I look forward to seeing you at the annual meeting.
Peace,
Dave.