Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
February 20, 2005 The Second Sunday in Lent
Genesis 12:1-4
Charlie Brown and Linus are looking at a young tree. Charlie Brown says, “It’s a beautiful little tree, isn’t it?” “Yes, it is,” says Linus. Charlie Brown is in a reflective mood and says, “It’s a shame we won’t be around to see it when it’s fully grown.” Linus looks at him and asks, “Why? Where are we going?”
His question reminds me of a story told by Fred Craddock, a story I have shared with you before. Says Craddock: “When I was pastoring in Tennessee, there was a girl about seven years old who came to our church regularly for Sunday school, and sometimes her parents let her stay for the worship service. They didn’t come. We had a circular drive at that church. It was built for people who let their children off and drove on. We certainly didn’t want to inconvenience anyone. The girl’s family had moved from New Jersey with the new chemical plant. He was upwardly mobile; they were both very ambitious; and they didn’t come to church. There wasn’t really any need for that, I guess.
“But on Saturday nights, the whole town knew of their parties. They gave big parties, not for entertainment, but as part of the upwardly mobile thing. That determined who was invited: the right people, the one just above, and finally on up to the boss. And those parties were full of drinking – wild parties. Everybody knew about them. But there was their beautiful girl in church every Sunday.
“One Sunday morning I looked out and saw her, but she was not alone. I thought, ‘She’s come with some friends,’” but I later learned it was her mom and dad. After the service, Mr. and Mrs. Mom and Dad came up to me. They said they wanted to confess their faith in Christ, to be baptized, and to join the church. I had to ask, ‘What prompted this?’
“’Do you know about our parties?’
“’Yeah, I’ve heard about your parties.’
“’Well, we had one again last night, and it got a little out of hand – a little loud and there was too much drinking. We woke up our daughter. She came downstairs to about the third step. When she saw everyone there eating and drinking, she said, ‘Oh, can I say the blessing? God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food. Good-night everybody.’ Then she went back upstairs. Before long, people began looking at their watches and saying, ‘Oh my, look at the hour. It’s time to go.’ ‘Thank you, but we have stayed way too long.’ Within minutes, our house was empty.’
“’We began cleaning up, picking up crumpled napkins, spilled peanuts and half-eaten sandwiches, and taking out empty glasses on trays to the kitchen. At one point, we met each other at the sink, looked at each other, and my husband said what we both were thinking: ‘Where do we think we’re going?’”
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from you country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you…so Abram went, as the Lord had told him…” Reflecting on this text, indeed on the whole Abram/Abraham story, the writer of the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews said, “By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going… ” In the Letter of Hebrews, Abraham really is a model of faith, an example for all who venture forth with faith in God.
“Now the Lord said to Abram, go….” And he went. He gathered up Sarah and his family and he went. He left everything comfortable and familiar behind and took off across the desert. He didn’t ask, “You want me to do what and go where?” He didn’t even stop to ask for directions. What do you suppose Sarah thought when he came home that afternoon? “How was your day?” “Well, I just had a little talk with God and God wants us to pack up all our possessions and move to a foreign land where we will not know a single soul. Actually, I’m not too sure exactly where this new land is, but God has promised he will show us the way, show us where we need to go, and so, I said we’d go.” In another act of unbelievable faith, Sarah starts packing!
Abraham hears a call and leaves for a new land? Where do we think we are going? What are we doing with our lives? A few years ago, I came across this story told by Daniel Booz, a Church of the Brethren pastor in McPherson, Kansas: “Every month, I lead a Bible study at the local Health Care Center for the Aged. I recently asked those who attended if they liked receiving calls. Almost to the person, everyone said they liked to receive calls. But one astute person said, ‘It depends who is calling. I don’t like all of the calls I get and especially when MCI calls me all the time.” She went on to say that she was not in MCI’s circle of family and friends, then added, ‘And once you tell them that you live in a nursing home, they hang up on you.’
He asked her, “But what if it is God calling?”
She replied, “I don’t know. God has never called me.”
Do you think that’s true? God has never called? Have you been called lately? They looked up from their wild party, and there she was – their daughter - standing on the stairs, saying grace. And in that moment, that seemingly innocent moment, everything changed. You just never know when or how God might call. But this we do know …God will call.
(At this point Rev. Nelson asks everyone to sing “Here I Am, Lord” #452 – v.1 and refrain)
“Whom shall I send?” George never had the benefit of much formal education after high school. Yet he always enjoyed reading, especially the Bible and books about the Bible. He had become a popular adult teacher in the congregation. But George couldn’t have been more shocked when his pastor asked him to lead the newly formed Young Adult Class on Sunday mornings. “Me?” George asked in disbelief. “Those kids have all gone to college. They are all so smart. They will laugh me right out of the room.” But the pastor persisted, so George took a deep breath and began to teach his class. Today, the dozens of young adults who flock to the class every Sunday affectionately call it, “Bible…by George.” It is one of the bright spots in the life of that congregation.
“Whom shall I send?” Her name is Addie. In mid-life, from out of nowhere, she was laid low by a rare and crippling disease. In less than a year she was transformed from a vibrant, active woman into someone who was paralyzed and bedridden. She prayed, “God, I’m terrified by what the future may hold for me. Help me to find a way to serve you, despite this illness.”
Today Addie serves her church by doing one of the few activities she can engage in – talking on the telephone. She can’t walk or move around her house, but she can dial a telephone. Before every church meeting, members get a reminder call from Addie. When someone is sick, that person receives a daily call. Every older person in the congregation who is confined to home receives a morning check-in call from Addie. Says her pastor, “Even in her difficult situation, Addie found that God was calling her to continue her journey with God, though down a different path than she had intended to go. That’s faith – the continued, daily willingness to respond to God’s promise spoken over each of our lives.”
“Whom shall I send?” Reflecting on God’s call, Frederick Buechner writes, “It means for us simply that we must be careful with our lives, for Christ’s sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously. Everybody knows that. We need no one to tell us. Yet, in another way perhaps we do always need to be told, because there is always the temptation to believe that we have all the time in the world, whereas the truth of it is that we do not. …To Abraham, the voice said, ‘Go,’ and for each of us there are many voices that say it, but the question is which one will we obey with our lives, which of the voices that call is to be the one that we answer? No one can say, of course, except each for himself or herself, but I believe that it is possible to say at least this in general to all of us: we should go with our lives where we most need to go and where we are most needed... If we keep our eyes and ears open, our hearts open, we will find this place surely. And if we keep our lives open, the right place will find us.”
“‘Go,where I send you…and I will be with you, in fact I will make of you a great nation,’” and he went! As we read Abraham’s story, we discover that he had real doubts and questions along the way – Sarah had real doubts and questions – but still they went. They gathered up their doubts and stumbled on behind God into a future based on nothing but a promise. They kept their lives open. A colleague has said, “There are times when we must make a 100 percent commitment to something about which we are only 51 percent certain.” That was Abraham. Are things any different for us?
God asks, “Whom shall I send?” Then God turns to us – to our church – and says, “How about you? Will you go where I send you?” I believe that is the question for our church in 2005: Who is God calling us to be in Sebastopol? What kind of community of faith would God have us be? This is a time of transition for us, a time for discernment, to listen carefully for God’s call and to organize ourselves around that call. We did it a little at our Annual Meeting, we did it a little more extensively at our retreat last weekend and we will do it even more extensively in small group meetings – house meetings - in the months to come. Where is God calling us and are we prepared to go – as individuals and as a church?
In the words of Buechner, “In what manner do we go? I want to say joyously and proudly with a spring in our step and banners flying, and sometimes by God’s grace this is so. But more often than not, we go dragging our feet, wishing that we had never heard that voice that now we can never entirely stop hearing…And finally, who is he, this one who calls? All we know is the sound of his voice and maybe the lightest touch of his hands on our shoulders. He is the one we are free to follow or not to follow, the one we begin to know fully only by following. As we follow, we become, such as we are, his church, which is to say his body – a weak thing in most ways, half-hearted and of little faith, but full of hope for all that – and the only body he has in the world, the only hands and feet to do his work. And such is his power that even through us, even through the likes of us, others may be led to follow too.”
Here I am, Lord, is it I, Lord?
I have head you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.