Century Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ)

1301 Tamarack Road, Owensboro, KY 42301, (270) 684-0286, Pastor:  Rev. Jim Westmoreland

Going and Sitting--A Holy Tension!
Genesis 12:1-4a
by Jim Westmoreland

This story from Genesis 12 has some familiarity to us. It is about Father Abraham who is the earliest patriarch in the faith of Israel. In fact Abraham is considered the father of three great religious traditions--Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all of which trace their spiritual roots back to Abraham.

It is often told as a "feel-good" story about beginnings and blessings, but it becomes a story about a "holy tension" when it is seen as a story of purpose. I do not believe that God is merely a cosmic force or principle. I believe that He creates purposely and that He redeems creation, you and me in particular, both creatively and purposely. When the prophets told the story to Israel and when Jesus related to the Pharisees and religious leaders of his day, there was a "holy tension." And I believe that "holy tension" is needed for all of us so that we will be faithful to God's purposes for our church and for us as persons.

There is something about this Abraham story that has always appealed to me. Before he was Abraham, his name was Abram, the son of Terah, and he was raised in Ur, a city of 250,000 people on the western bank of the Euphrates River in lower Mesopotamia. Today, we call that area Iraq. Ur's beginnings go back to Ur-Nammu, the first king of the third dynasty of Ur, who built Ur about 2270 B.C. It is called Ur of the Chaldees in several places, but it was actually a part of the ancient Sumerian culture, which controlled the area up until about 1100 B.C. Not until 1100 B.C. did the tribe of the Chaldee come into the country and begin a dynasty of kings that ruled and gained power in what became known as the Chaldean or Babylonian empire.

Ur was not just a city, but a great seat of civilization in its day. Archeologists have discovered clay tablets indicating a codified law system. It was a precursor to the famous Code of Hammurabi, who took the throne as the sixth king of the first dynasty of Babylon. This city also had a standard system of weights and measures, and skilled studies in medicine, geometry, and the art of metallurgy. They worshiped many gods. From the ancient Sumerian story, The Gilgamesh Epic, written between 2750 and 2500 B.C., we have learned about their many gods and beliefs.

Abram's father moved the family from Ur to Haran after Abram's brother died. It was the custom for the extended family to all live together. It is here, while Abram's father, Terah, was still alive, that Abram began to wrestle with the sense that Yahweh was speaking to him in very specific ways. He revealed to Abram that there is but one God and that he is El Shaddai, which means God almighty, the supreme power in heaven and earth. And, in Genesis 12:1, "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." To leave family, the strong relationships and the security they provided would be a very difficult decision.

To be God's person is to hear a call from God to go on a journey to accomplish His purposes. Imagine living among the distractions of many gods. Don't we do that today. Life is busy. There are many demands, many voices telling us how to be happy, wealthy and wise. They are not all telling the truth. And then, God begins to reveal Himself to us. We could ignore His nudging voice in our lives, and perhaps we have many times before, but, this time, we, like Abraham respond. He has come to us with His presence, and we begin to say Ok, I'll try listening for a little while. And then, he begins to lovingly guide us. Yesterday, God was a vague or distant thought, but, today, He is a living presence in our lives.

When God comes to us, we may have begun to realize that something was missing as we begin to respond to his nudges. We recognize that we are not in control, and we're pretty sure no one else on this earth is either, and we begin to believe, more than we can understand, that there is a God who is in control. And then, we feel His presence and His blessing, and we are called into a covenant with Him. And, He asks some things of us.

God gives Abram his blessing in v.2 "I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great." Period! That's where Israel stopped. They were happy to receive God's blessing, and they were quite willing to wear the badge of specialness as "God's chosen people." It is here that Arnold Toynbee, the historian has problems. Toynbee admires the Judaic concept of one true and great God,⁽¹⁾ but he objects to what he calls the Jewish "self-centeredness" in casting themselves in rivalry with and in ignoring the rest of the world.

The result he suggests is that the God who is so favored says that the Chosen People are better than other people.⁽²⁾ They are willing to sit and worship and savor their favored status, but they are unwilling to hear or do the last part of the covenant.

Look at the last part of v. 2, Abram receives a blessing "so that you will be a blessing. That's his mission, his purpose for being. It was Israel's mission and purpose. It is also the church's mission and purpose and ours as individuals as well. We are to be a blessing.

Israel struggled with that. They wanted God as their own. They would worship Him (sometimes), but they had no sense of being a blessing to the people around them. They were challenged time and again by the prophets for failing not only to be true to God, but to be a light to the nations. The prophet wrote in Isaiah 42:7, "I have preserved you and given you for a covenant of the people, for a light to the nations, for opening the eyes of the blind, for bringing out prisoners from the dungeon, from jail those who sit in darkness."

There is a natural tendency toward complacency and comfort. Israel struggled over and over with this. There is a tendency to think that God is on our side; therefore, I can do nothing and I will be blessed. The church, like Israel, exists to worship God, to develop faithful people who are servants of God, and to pass on the faith, not only in this generation, but from one generation to the next. The church, to survive, must continually equip and call out new leaders. And, those who would be and could be tomorrow's leaders in the church must begin to step into leadership.

Jesus' ministry was a "go to the people ministry" and some of them were curious, told others and they sought him out, as Nicodemus did as recorded in John the third chapter. Jesus goes to the people preaching and teaching that the Kingdom of God is at hand. He also sends out his disciples and us, making us a Great Commission people, sent with the word "Go", or the assumptive, "As you are going, make disciples . . ."

Israel's sin was to want to be a Temple people. They wanted to be content with what they had. They chose to be a "sit and worship" people and not a "go, be a blessing" people. Churches are always tempted to substitute our beautiful sanctuaries for the Temple. We can feel comfortable, secure, even chosen in our places of worship. But we are called to be a covenant people. We are promised God's blessing, and we receive it so that we will be a blessing! For us to be healthy and do both, there must be a holy tension so that we don't go without worshiping and so we don't worship without going .

Several years ago, Bruce Larson, one of the key leaders of the church renewal movement of the 1970's and 80's, told the story of being in a busy hotel and getting on an elevator. Now, this was before "handicap accessible" elevators and buttons were a common thing. This particular hotel had done something to give children on the elevator something they wanted to do, but caused a lot of problems for the hotel and its guests. Children like to push the buttons, whether it is the telephone, the TV remote control, or the buttons in the elevator.

This hotel had installed some buttons down at the level of three and four year-olds, and it had a brass sign, I suppose for the parents, that said, "Buttons for Little People." These buttons you could push, they would light up, but nothing happened. They weren't real, and they didn't do anything.

In church, if we are not careful, we can come together for worship. We can sing hymns, read scripture, preach, pray and have communion. If what we do does not equip us and motivate us to go out from this place and minister to others and tell others about our experience with Jesus the Christ, then we are like the children on the elevator who play with the buttons, but nothing happens.⁽³⁾ They don't change floors, and our lives are not changed.

We are told in scripture to worship, to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, but there is a holy tension between sitting and going, between working on our inner spirituality and between working on fulfilling God's purpose for creating us and calling us his own.

Remember, For us to be healthy and do both, there must be a holy tension so that we don't go without worshiping and so we don't worship without going. Amen.