Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 (with a passing nod to Romans 4:13-25)I love maps. I always have. I went through a phase in third grade during which I often drew the outline of my home state, Pennsylvania, and presented the drawings to my teacher. I’m not sure what Mrs. Henney thought when she received yet another crudely drawn version of our commonwealth on her desk. I think most elementary school teachers must be close to sainthood based solely on their patience. (And, by the way, I’d like to point out that the outline of Pennsylvania is not as easy to draw as you might think, especially for a third grader. This wasn’t Wyoming or Utah, after all!)
When a little older I found out that you could write to the various states and get maps from them. (This was in the 60s, so the states had the budgets to give away maps then.) Wow...I had a wonderful time. I would trace car trips we took as a family on road maps. Even today, I like to follow where I’m going on a map, even those maps on the screens of airplanes that more-or-less show you where you supposedly are in the world.
My love of maps and the related enjoyment of geography eventually grew into my still held fondness for travel. In high school, I would plan entire trips around the country based on an Amtrak schedule that I had gotten a hold of somehow. (Yes, I was an early adapter of what is now called the nerd persona.) Mind you, there wasn’t an Amtrak station anywhere near where I lived in Northeastern Pennsylvania. But I could plan. And dream.
By and by, my interest in maps and travel and geography actually led to some treks here and there. First, there were car trips, usually with my parents, somewhere on the east coast. By the time I got to seminary though, I was primed for something bigger: I had seen the U.S. east coast from New England to North Carolina and out as far west as Ohio. So when I was able to orchestrate the tiniest glimmer of an opportunity to study overseas, I fanned and cared for that tiny flame until I found myself in a plane hurtling across North America, the Pacific, and the equator. I spent most of 1986, putatively studying theology, in Adelaide, South Australia. But I didn’t stay put the whole time certainly; there were journeys to the Outback, Uluru (which you may know as Ayers Rock), Melbourne, the Great Barrier Reef, Sydney, and anywhere else I could find wheels that would get me there. I traveled by plane, train, car, and ferry. I felt, as a traveler, that I had arrived...some pun intended there.
Of course, I hadn’t arrived really. That big gulp of travel, after my prior sips, had only made me thirstier for more. I was primed to go and still to this day will gladly browse all the gadgets in travel stores. And, as you know, I still will board anything moving to see where it’s going. Travel is for me a cure for some deeply embedded symptoms, I think, which is why I’m fond of referring to our friend Marilyn as my “travel therapist”. T.S. Eliot was right, I think, when he said, “The journey not the arrival matters.” Just going is important.
When people think of the Bible these days, they think of it as a rule book or a guide or narrative or, some, as complete fiction. Few though think of it as a travelogue I would imagine. If we use that lens to view the Bible however, looking at scripture not so much as a tour book to the lands of the modern Middle East, but more as a travel memoir of the many varied characters who populate it, we might find some useful travel tips; tips that might help us as the travelers and tourists that we are in this funny, foreign land of faith.
And what better time to think about that than during Lent? Lent has so often been described as a journey (which I am first to admit I’m guilty of) that the metaphor may have become somewhat trite and overdone; a bit of a yawner, perhaps. “Oh, Lent?” we might hear ourselves responding, “it’s that ‘journey’ that we take every year for six weeks you know. I’m not sure where we start or where we end, but they keep telling me it’s a journey, so I just get on for the ride every spring when it rolls around.”
Compared to the journeys we find throughout the whole 66 books that make up our scripture, our travels today are pretty tame. We complain if our airplane seat won’t recline but Jonah was tossed off a ship in the midst of a terrible storm and swallowed by a big fish. We’re impatient if we’re delayed by an hour or two while we read that Moses led the Hebrew people through the wilderness for forty years--forty years!--waiting to get to the promised land. Paul’s missionary, evangelistic voyages are legendary and he encountered scorching heat, hunger, hostility, arguments, and raging storms at every step. Noah floated above a flooded earth with a living cargo bent on eating each other. The disciples scattered to the ends of their earth and told a remarkable story that lives on to this day. The Bible is all about journey from Adam & Eve walking out of the garden into a new and different life than they had known to the final journey that John of Patmos describes when we all end up before the celestial throne.
And so it is that we encounter Abram and Sarai today in the midst of their journey some 35 hundred years ago. The narrative that tells of their life on the road and of their descendants takes up a lot of the book of Genesis. The first 11 chapters of Genesis are more or less the story of all humanity as seen through the eyes of the authors of the Hebrew scriptures. They tell of creation and humanity’s wandering, or journeying, from God time and time again. The very first covenant that God makes is found in these first 11 chapters when God promises not to destroy all of creation again to Noah. When we reach chapter 12 though, things get a little more specific. Beginning in chapter 12 and all the way through to the end of Genesis in chapter 50, we get the tales of Abraham and Sarah and those who followed.
From these chapters last 38 chapters, we learn more and more about these forefathers and foremothers in faith. And it all begins with Abram and Sarai, not though in Canaan, the land they were to settle. They were from a place far from there: Ur in Mesopotamia or Sumeria. First they traveled to Harran, in modern day Turkey, where Abram’s father died. And there, in Harran, Abram received his call from God to go to Canaan, which we know today as Israel. So Abram & Sarai, along with nephew Lot, packed up and headed off to this funny place that was a buffer zone amidst all the big powers of the day.
Abram and Sarai were about 75 years old when they left Harran. They had lived a full life by this point. Well, not quite full because they were childless. And of course that meant a lot in those days; much more than we think of it today.
But they were 75 and setting off to do something new! A whole new journey. By the time we get to them today, they’ve had quite a few experiences; interesting experiences. Today we come to a point in the story that is pivotal. Not only does God make a covenant with them that they will be the parents of nations (that’s nations, in the plural) but to prove it, God actually changes their names--an event that occurs to people often when they encounter God and their lives are changed. This whole baby thing though; it’s wildly impossible and unthinkable. They’re both well beyond the point when having children is possible, not to mention convenient. In fact, in verse 17, just after our reading for this morning leaves off, the newly renamed, alleged father-to-be falls down laughing. In cyber speak he’s ROTFL (rolling on the floor laughing). A chapter later, Sarah overhears that she’s going to become pregnant, and she too has a good chuckle over it.
Of course, the last laugh is on none other than God, who always seems to get the last laugh. And that’s often the way of our journeys, isn’t it? I’ve seen and heard a saying that Allen reminded me about this week: “If you want to hear God laugh, tell God what you plan to do with your life,” or variations to that effect.
The last thing on the mind of these two nonagenarians who have traveled countless miles through the course of their lifetime is what their descendants are going to think about them. But there they were, finally in Canaan and they have to think about bassinets and the practicality of cloth diapers versus disposables. And, true to the promise, God came through and, as Paul reminded us in that letter to the Romans, Abraham and Sarah not only gave birth to Isaac and a genetic lineage that would grow and multiply, but also to a faith genealogy in which we count ourselves.
Journeying is in our roots; in our spiritual roots; at the core of our very being. We don’t, like our ancestors Abraham and Sarah, stay put. At least we shouldn’t, I believe. We need to be wary of becoming too comfortable in what we think of as our home and recall that God is constantly calling people of faith out on the road. Our journey is, clearly, supposed to be towards God; toward that center of our being. But like the journey that one takes in a labyrinth, the route is twisted and confusing often. Just when we think we’re there, the path turns and we are moving away from our goal and closer union with the Divine.
Throughout the journey of my faith life, I have had many surprises and unexpected events. But like the physical, geographical journeys I take, those surprises and unexpected events are the very things that I remember, that make the journey memorable, that are looked back on as high-points rather than the potential problems and inconveniences that they might have seemed at the time.
At one point along the way of my faith journey, in a place in which I finally felt spiritually at home, I encountered a prayer by one of the holy ones of the 20th century, Thomas Merton. Like a precious souvenir that may mean little to others but floods the mind with memories of a place or time, I’ve carried this prayer with me along the way and I want to end today with it:
"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 that 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." (from Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton)
Photo of Uluru by Peter Nijenhuis from his Flickr site.
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