Archetypal Stories
The unexpected journey is one of the great archetypal spiritual stories. You’ve probably got a favorite from childhood. The Hobbit stories of JRR Tolkien and most of CS Lewis’ Narnia chronicles fit the bill. So too Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.” When I was about my son’s age, my favorite unexpected journey story was “the land before time.” Little Foot the Apatosaurus and friends make their way through a changing climate to safety in the Great Valley.
Today’s story of Abram, Sarai, and their household is one of the oldest versions of the unexpected journey story on our planet. Abram, in his old age, is called to leave the safety and security of his home. Abram hear’s God’s call to venture out into the desert, the wilderness. Abram leaves what is known for what is unknown.
Abram’s faithful response to God is the beginning of the story of our faith. Sure, the Bible starts with Adam and Eve, but it is Abram who charts the paths of our response to God. Many of the ancient stories call Abram the first monotheist. Our Islamic siblings regard Ibrahim as the first Muslim, the first to submit to God. We tend to treat God as more of an idea, and less of a traveling companion, but that wasn’t true for Abram. His is a story, a life, shaped by the journey. He is so marked by the journey that his very name changes. Abram becomes Abraham.
The road isn’t exactly smooth, is it? In a day when your wealth was measured, in part, by your heritage of children, Abram and Sarai remain childless. Though God promises Abram a homeland, he arrives to find that land currently occupied. So Abram journeys on, choosing to trust rather than to run back to what is familiar.
Unsettled Faith
Have you ever seen that bumper sticker that says, “my ancestor was a wandering Aramean”? The line comes from Deuteronomy. Just a few hundred years after Abraham’s death, his heirs were wondering about the significance of his peripatetic life. Sometimes we have to be reminded, our faith isn’t a settled faith. Our God is less a God-of-destinations than a fellow-traveler and guide. Our faith is meant to be about the journey. Faith is an adventure.
Too often, I think, we treat faith as a set of settled intellectual propositions. Just last Sunday we celebrated the “doctrine” of the Trinity, the only feast day our church has for a doctrine. Still, Julie encouraged us to practice the Trinity, practice the dynamic love at the heart of God. God is not static, and God doesn’t look for static people. God wants followers.
So let me ask you, is your faith more a mechanism of control or is your faith an invitation on an adventure?
Now, I know I am setting up a false dichotomy. Faith should be a little of both. A good faith has some rules that help prepare us for the journey ahead, but, but, I think too many in our world treat faith like a system of ideas, or like a hard set of rules. Faith has been used to hold power over ourselves and over others.
On Not Reading St. Paul with Howard Thurman
Howard Thurman, the legendary preacher, mystic, and mentor to many of the Civil Rights’ leaders, including Dr. King, used to tell stories about his grandmother Nancy Abrose. He counted his grandmother as the single most important influence in his own faith. Thurman’s grandmother had grown up enslaved. She lived through emancipation.
Young Howard Thurman would often read the Bible aloud to his grandmother, but on her insistence, he never read the letters of St. Paul. Thurman wrote that it wasn’t until he was home visiting about halfway through college at Morehouse, that he finally had the courage to ask her why she wouldn’t let him read anything from Paul. She responded that during the days of slavery, occasionally a white preacher would be sent from the to preach to the enslaved people and she said:
“Always the white minister used as his text something from Paul. At least three or four times a year he used as a text: ‘Slaves, be obedient to them that are your masters …, as unto Christ.’ Then he would go on to show how it was God’s will that we were slaves and how, if we were good and happy slaves, God would bless us. I promised my Maker [she said,] that if I ever learned to read and if freedom ever came, I would not read that part of the Bible.”
If anyone gets to skip Paul, it’s Nancy Ambrose. Christians have used faith to justify all sorts of evil. From slavery to genocidal campaigns against Jewish people, the systemic oppression of women, violent abuse toward LGBTQ+ people. Often, often, Christians have used St. Paul in this way. Today I want to suggest to you that in addition to a distortion and abuse of the text, this sort of faith comes from a lack of imagination. When we fail to see fail to see our faith as a journey, when we fail to follow God as our guide, we can also fail to celebrate the value of our traveling companions.
Faith and the Law
If you can stomach a little bit of Paul, Listen again to what he says today: “The promise to Abraham and his descendants, that he would inherit the world, didn’t come though the Law, but through the righteousness that comes from faith.” Even for St. Paul, that old curmudgeon, faith isn’t about strict legalistic obedience. Faith isn’t control. Faith is something else.
I’ve said this to you before, but the opposite of faith isn’t doubt. It’s not. The opposite of faith is certainty. You can’t have faith when you are certain about something. Faith has to include an element of doubt. Faith is a more dynamic word. It’s not a static belief. Faith is not simply about putting stock in an intellectual position. Faith is more akin to trust.
Trust
We need more trust in our society. Part of the crisis in our politics, in the economy, in our streets comes from an epidemic lack of trust. Now, to be fair, for many of us trust has been lost. I know there are a number of people in this church who stand with one foot out the door. Many people end up here because their trust was violated by another church institution. I know that trust can be lost.
Trust can be lost, yes, but trust can also be practiced. Especially for those of us who have been let down by an institution, sometimes we need a little more practice. We have to choose to trust. We have to choose to lean into relationship. We have to choose to let down our guard, at least a little. Now not all trust has to be blind. You can, and should, have some safeguards, but if you spend your life waiting to be disappointed, you are likely to find all the disappointments you are expecting. If you give people the benefit of the doubt. If you choose to trust, you might be surprised when folks show up. You might be surprised when the Spirit of God shows up, and invites you on a new adventure.
In order to have faith, you have to have some doubt. You have to know that the road is bumpy. You have to know the odds aren’t forever in your favor. Faith is a decision to trust, a decision to go, a decision to venture something new.
You can feel this tension in the collection of short stories from Matthew’s Gospel this morning. Jesus calls a tax collector. He eats with sinners. He allows an unclean person to touch him. He approaches a dead body. Jesus goes just about everywhere you are not supposed to go. He calls followers who he shouldn’t call. Jesus violates rules and customs of his time, and the people respond. The religious establishment has questions. But the people who are suffering, the people who are excluded, those people are drawn into a relationship of healing trust. And then Jesus leads them on down the road.
Like Abram and Sarai’s Jesus’ story follows that archetype of the unexpected journey. No one would have anticipated a savior to rise up from Nazareth. No one would have waited for a traveling healer and preacher to say, “blessed are the poor, blessed are the persecuted, blessed are those who mourn.” No one would have bet that such a message would resonate so deeply, that others would get up and join in the adventure.
There’s a reason the unexpected journey is an archetypal story. These stories speak deeply to our soul. The question I have for your, Christians, is this: is your faith an adventure? Do you trust God to lead you, despite your failings, despite the odds. Is your faith a list of beliefs you are supposed to hold, or is it something more? Do those beliefs help you find a pattern through which you might look up at the night sky, chart the stars, and imagine the journey on which God might lead us next?
Mike Angell 