June 8, 2008 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

You Won’t Know If You Don’t Go

Cynthia M. Campbell
President, McCormick Theological Seminary

Psalm 33:1 –12
Genesis 12:1–9

In everlasting love,
the God of Abraham and Sarah chose a covenant people
to bless all families of the earth.
Hearing their cry,
God delivered the children of Israel
from the house of bondage.
Loving us still,
God makes us heirs with Christ of the covenant.

A Brief Statement of Faith
Presbyterian Church (USA)

A famous author once said that there are only two plots in fiction: a stranger came to town and a man or woman set out on a journey. That seems like an overstatement, but I think we all recognize these two themes: Someone new comes to town (a child is born; someone marries into a family; someone new comes into an organization). In this plot line, a character from outside comes in and unsettles a settled situation, changes the dynamics, brings something new into a system that is (for better or worse) in place. Or someone sets out on a journey. In this scenario, something new is out ahead of the person, waiting to be encountered or discovered. The journey may involve literal travel or it may be internal, a journey of self-discovery. But in any case, the story revolves around an individual who gets out of his or her familiar surroundings and who through various encounters and adventures discovers something or someone new or discovers him- or herself in a new way; in any case, everything is changed.

We read novels and biography because we are in search of story lines that invite us in. Whether we know it or not, we are looking for a new way of seeing things or ourselves. We may be looking for our own values to be validated or to be lived out in ways we can see in the experience of others. Or we may be looking for new ideas or ways of being in the world. In any case, stories invite us in and invite us to find ourselves.

The Bible is replete with narrative. Both of these big story lines are easily found. To oversimplify, the story of Jesus is “a stranger came to town.” And the story of Abraham is “a man set out on a journey.” It is no exaggeration to say that these are two of the best-known stories in the world. As Christians, our life together is built around the story of Jesus: we celebrate his birth, study his ministry and teaching, reflect deeply on his suffering and death, and rejoice at his resurrection. To be a Christian is to find our own story in the story of Jesus.

But Jesus is not our only story. The story of Abraham is pivotal for us, as well. Abraham is the beginning of the story of God and a chosen people. In Abraham, Paul found the doorway through which Gentiles (non-Jews) could enter God’s story with Israel. But the story of Abraham is also a foundation stone for both Jews and Muslims. Taken together, we Jews, Christians, and Muslims, represent more than half the world’s people. And one of the things that binds us together is the story of Abraham—this curious figure whose story goes back more than 3,500 years.

So once upon a time, long, long ago, a man was born in what is now southern Iraq in a place called Ur of the Chaldeans. His name was Abram, and his wife’s name was Sarai. They moved with Abram’s father to Haran, just across the border of Syria in Turkey. When Abram is seventy-five years old, God speaks to him and says, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” So Abram gathered his family and all his possessions and journeyed south to Shechem in what is now Israel/Palestine.

As the story goes, God not only issued a summons; God made a promise: “I will make of you a great nation.” But there is a problem. “Nation” at this point does not mean a confederation of like-minded citizens; it means a huge extended family. The problem is that Abram and Sarai have no children. She has been unable to conceive a child; she is (as the Bible puts it) “barren.” They arrive in the land known at this time as Canaan. Once again, God appears to Abram and this time promises to give the land itself to Abram’s “offspring,” of which, at the moment, there are none.

Over the next twelve chapters of Genesis, the story (or I should say the adventure) of Abraham unfolds. His name is officially changed in chapter 17 to Abraham, which means literally “ancestor of a multitude.” Eventually two sons are born. Ishmael, the son of Sarah’s Egyptian slave, Hagar, is the first born. Tragically, he and his mother are exiled after the birth of Sarah’s son, Isaac. Tradition holds that Ishmael is the ancestor of the Arab peoples to whom the prophet Mohammed is born some six centuries after Jesus.

The biblical story continues through Isaac and his wife, Rebecca, who become the parents of Jacob and Esau. Centuries later, when God appears to Moses and calls him to the task of bringing the people of Israel back to the land God promised to Abraham’s offspring, God says to Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

One could spend months of Sundays on the adventures of Abraham, so grand and troubling is the story of his family. But the core of the story is the very beginning: the Lord said to Abraham, “Go.” And Abraham went. God promised to bless Abraham by making him a blessing to the entire world. Astonishingly, Abraham trusted this promise. No, it is better to say, Abraham trusted the one who made the promise. The mark of his trust is that he set out on a journey. He went out leaving behind everything that made him who he was. The text makes sure we don’t miss that point: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house.” Leave everything behind. And by the way, leave the destination to me, God says. You are going “to a land that I will show you.”

I don’t know about you, but this has never happened to me. I’ve never heard a voice giving clear instructions about what I was to do next with my life. Every time I have had a major decision to make, the process has been agonizing—making lists of pros and cons, consulting friends and colleagues, going on retreat and praying. But a voice with instructions—not so much! And yet the fact that I have never had exactly Abraham’s experience doesn’t mean that this story doesn’t still have great resonance.

In his remarkable book Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths, author Bruce Feiler says you begin thinking there is one story of Abraham only to discover that there are 240. Since the biblical story of Abraham picks up when he is seventy-five, legend invents a childhood. Since the Hebrew Bible focuses on Isaac, Islamic texts pick up stories of Hagar’s journey to Mecca and Abraham’s later relationship with Ishmael.

Abraham and his adventures are almost a spiritual Rorschach text. They invite us to find ourselves and our way of relating to God in this strange narrative. In Abraham’s story, three great faith traditions have found their own identity—their ways of being religious.

As Christians, we read Abraham through the lens of Paul. Paul was a well-trained Jewish scholar who came to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah of God, the one in whom all of God’s promises to Israel had been fulfilled. When non-Jews, or Gentiles, began responding to the message of Jesus, Paul realized there was a big problem. How could they, these “others,” be included? To answer his question, Paul went looking for someone in his own Jewish tradition with whom God had a relationship before the Law was given to Moses. And guess who Paul found—Abraham! And what is at the heart of Abraham’s story? asked Paul. Answer: faith. Genesis 15:6: Abraham had faith and “the Lord reckoned it to him [Abraham] as righteousness.” So the story of Abraham becomes a story of faith. Abraham becomes righteous (in right relationship with God) by believing in the God who makes promises.

Fine, say our Jewish cousins. Faith is fine; trust is OK. But the point is, what did Abraham do? God said, “Go.” Abraham went. What makes Abraham righteous is that he followed God’s instructions. He not only “trusted” in the abstract; he trusted with his actions, with his very life. He left everything; he set out on the journey. He not only had faith; he was faithful to the one whose voice said, “Go, and I will bless you so that you will be a blessing.” Abraham was presented with the challenge and he took it; he was offered a vocation, and he accepted.

OK, say our Muslim friends. The key here is that Abraham rightly understood the relationship: God is God; Abraham is human. When God the creator, the All-Merciful, speaks, humans obey—or in the word that defines Islam, humans submit to the divine will. When people recognize that God is indeed the one who alone is holy, then they come to realize that submitting to God’s design or will is the only way they will find fulfillment, happiness, peace. Thus, they say, Abraham is the first Muslim, because he is the first to submit himself to God.

Believing, obeying, submitting: three ways of reading Abraham. And we are all right! The story of Abraham is about faith and obedience and submitting to God—and more! It’s also about risk. Before I came to McCormick, there was a distinguished professor of Old Testament, Bob Boling, who was famous for pithy phrases, somewhat like the one-liner’s for which Yogi Berra is famous. One of Boling’s (and the seminary’s) favorites was, You won’t know if you don’t go! There is no way to get to new knowledge or insight or understanding if you don’t go—if you don’t get out of your comfort zone, your accustomed patterns of thinking, your regular habits of being. You won’t know if you don’t risk. You won’t grow if you don’t go.

Journeys come in all sorts and sizes. Sometimes they involve picking up and moving—to a new job or new community. Sometimes they involve taking on a new challenge. Sometimes it’s a matter of thinking differently about yourself or your spouse or partner or your work. Sometimes it means reconnecting with your deepest values and deciding it’s time to take them seriously, regardless of the cost. The story of Abraham that grounds three of the world’s great faith traditions is that God is one who summons people out of comfort into risk, out of familiarity into the unknown, out of the conventional into opportunity. Abraham was called, and he went. He went out of his comfortable family home, and God made him the father of a multitude. We, here today, are some of his children.

You may not hear a voice you hear giving clear instructions. It may be a nudge, a yearning; it may be the result of personal or collective deliberation. It may not be you alone to whom the call comes but rather you as a family or your business or your school or us as a congregation. However the call comes, Abraham is our example and our guide.

One other thing. The Bible tells us that Abraham was seventy-five years old when the adventure began. Even accounting for the Old Testament’s penchant for excessively long lives during this era, the point is Abraham was certifiably old and Sarah was well beyond child-bearing years. What’s the point? It’s never too late. Or as Yogi Berra would say, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” It’s never too late for a journey with God.