August 13, 2007 — 9:41 AM
What are you looking at?
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40
In 1991 I faced a life-altering question. I was not alone. College seniors everywhere were facing the same question: "What comes next?"
I felt fortunate because I had a couple of different options to choose from - find employment as a Spanish teacher or continue my education by pursuing a graduate degree in Spanish Literature. So I did what any respectable college senior would do - I covered all bases. I sent out letters and résumés to schools around the country. In addition I sent out applications to a wide range of graduate schools.
Then I prayed.
Oh, you can be sure that I had done plenty of praying leading up to this point. But now the praying began in earnest. I asked God to make it clear what path I should take and open up a place for me to go. And God did just that. Of all the resumés and applications I sent only one option became available to me - graduate studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
For a girl who had lived her whole life in Michigan (and the first 18 years of that in the same house in a rural village), the idea was at once exhilarating and terrifying. But it seemed clear that God was calling me to this place. So I went, trusting God to provide. And that is exactly what God did. Here I am sixteen years later unable to envision life anywhere else.
I thank God daily for the opportunity to come to California and for all the many blessings that God has provided during my time here. And I believe that God will continue to provide for me in the years to come.
Now I imagine that God's call to Abraham to move looked much different than the one that I just described. Abraham was not thinking about making a big change in his life. He hadn't reached a point when changing location was part of the expected course for his life. I imagine that his life was pretty well established. He had a wife and servants. He had livestock and dwellings. I would say it's a pretty safe bet that Abraham wasn't busy searching for a career path or educational opportunities to pursue.
But, Abraham did come from a nomadic tradition so he was used to moving around. He and the family and the workers he supported would move regularly to find the food, water, and shelter that was needed to keep them all alive. Even so, their movement took place within a well-defined area - an area with which Abraham would have been quite familiar.
In the middle of all of this, God comes along and throws a wrench into the mix. God says, "Abraham, think bigger. Think outside the area you are accustomed to. Trust me and go somewhere completely new." And the amazing thing is, Abraham did exactly that.
Our passage from Hebrews tells us, "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." He set out not knowing where he was going. Some might argue that that is typical behavior for a male, but that act of faith is the reason why to this very day Abraham continues to be an example to people around the world of a pillar of faith.
He could have looked around him and said, "You know, I've got it pretty good here. I know where to find food and water. I know how to move around so that I and my people don't deplete the resources of the land. My life has been pretty good so far. Why upset the rhythm I've got going? Why mess with a good thing?"
But mess with it he did. And, much to Abraham's relief I am sure, God provided for Abraham and all who went with him.
This story of Abraham's faith in the face of a big move probably sprang to the minds of the people hearing Jesus' words in the message from Luke when he said: "Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." The story of Abraham's faithful response to God's call was one that the Jewish Christian audience would have told and retold as they sought to be faithful to God in their own lives.
The example of Abraham would have reminded those listening that God had promised and then provided a place for Abraham and his descendants. It helped the listeners to trust that God would make such provisions for their own needs. Jesus wanted his listeners to rely similarly on their own faith in God's abundant goodness as they were being called to a new place - to be a new community of believers, to gain a new understanding of what it means to follow God.
Can you think of times in your own life when you were called to move? Maybe that move took you, like me, to a new state. Maybe it took you to a new city. Or maybe you stayed in the same general area but you moved to a new house. Maybe your move instead took you to a new career or job.
Was this move planned for like mine? Or did it come as a surprise, like it might have for Abraham? Either way, the move no doubt brought with it changes - both big and small. And change, even when it is much anticipated, is hard. It's disruptive. It upends normalcy and makes us start over again.
When I moved to Santa Barbara to begin my graduate studies, I left behind a strong group of friends. They were finding jobs and settling down in the town where our college was. They continued to get together and do the things that we had always done together throughout college. It was hard to leave the comfort of that group. It was made even harder by the fact that the students in the program at UCSB were mainly native Spanish-speakers who came from backgrounds that were much different from my own.
During the first semester of my studies, I often found myself wishing to be back with my friends in Michigan, hanging out, cooking dinners together, laughing and having fun. But slowly I realized that if I remained wistful for what had been, I would never be able to appreciate what actually was. I needed to stop looking back so that I could truly see what was right around me and where God was leading me for the future.
This is exactly the point that the writer of Hebrews is trying to impress upon his listeners when he tells them about Abraham's descendants. Listen again to how he describes them in verses 13b-16a:
"They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one."
If the descendants had felt at home in the lands from which they had come, they never would have looked to God to provide something better for them. They would have missed out on the blessings that God wanted to shower down upon them in this better, heavenly country. But they knew that life as it was was not all that God wanted to give them. So they continued to look for their true homeland - the one that was with God.
Jesus was calling his listeners to do the same when he exhorted them to "sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
Don't be enamored of earthly things that wear out and go away, Jesus says. No, treasure instead things with eternal value - things from God. Be mindful of where you look, Jesus warns. Be mindful of what you value. When we look to heavenly things, or things from God, our hearts will follow.
In the last year I have attended a couple of different conferences through the PC(USA) in which a video was shown where former National Geographic photographer Dewitt Jones talks about how he went about getting "the right shot" for the magazine as well as for other projects that he worked on.
Several times in this video, he shows examples of photos he had taken that were amazing and would have completed the assignment he had been given just fine. But in each case, he shows another photo - one that was taken from a different perspective. In each case, the latter photo is immensely better than the one that he has shown previously.
Jones would have been justified in stopping after getting the shots that he shows first. They are great photos. But something within him told him that those were not the best that he could get. So he looked at things from a different angle. And often he was glad that he did.
This is what God called Abraham to do - look at life with a wider angle, don't settle for only seeing things from one angle. Trust God and God will help you to change perspective. And then God will give you more than you ever could have hoped for.
Jesus called his listeners to do likewise. He urged his listeners to look at being followers of God in a new way, a way that looks beyond the cares of this earth, a way that doesn't encourage individuals to store up treasures for themselves but rather to give them away to those who really need them.
How is it possible to live this way? How can we be open to changing our perspective? By faith.
The entire eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews is a treatise on the subject of faith. It begins with a definition of what faith is: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." And then the chapter continues by giving examples of ancestors from the Hebrew Scriptures who acted by faith and were honored by God for doing so.
In the twelve verses that we read this morning, the phrases "by faith" or "in faith" are used six times. Faith in God and in God's promise to provide must ground all that we do if we are going to look for the future that God is calling us to. Faith makes it possible to be open to moving and changing in ways that we have not or maybe cannot imagine.
Faith that allows us to see what is not visible, takes imagination. Fenton Johnson speaks of that in the book Keeping Faith... A Skeptic's Journey Among Christian and Buddhist Monks. He explains:
"Imagination lies at the heart of faith because to imagine anything better than the given is to make an effort where none is required and no immediate payoff presents itself - to imagine, for example, a world with less violence and more love. To the extent that this statement strikes my twenty-first century ear as naïve, my reaction results from my conception of history as a linear narrative. Instead, history must serve to help me formulate my own truth and live inside it - the ultimate imaginative act.
"I can experience sacredness only if I create and cultivate it. The sacred and the holy are not confined to a place... or a group... but inside each of us, waiting to be called forth, then acted out in faith...."
To put ourselves in a place of creating and cultivating the sacred, we need to focus on God. By keeping God as our center, we are able to allow the imagination that faith brings to flow forth and help us to see the future that God is calling us to. By knowing who we are and whose we are, we are able to be open to seeing things from a different perspective.
Rabi'a al-Adawiyya, an Eighth Century Islamic Woman Saint, understood this when she wrote:
Oh Lord, whatever share of this world
You could give to me,
Give it to your enemies:
Whatever share of the next world
You want to give to me -
Give it to your friends.
You are enough for me.
O God, my whole concern and desire in this world,
Is that I should always remember you
Above all things of this world
And that in the next
I should meet with you alone.
That is why I always pray: "Your will be done."
Oh my Lord,
if I worship you
from fear of hell, burn me in hell.
If I worship you
from hope of Paradise, bar me from its gates.
But if I worship you
for yourself alone, grant me the beauty of your Face.
What are you looking at? Where is your focus? Is it on earthly things that thieves come near and moths destroy? Is it on where you came from - a place that may seem happier, safer, or more fulfilling than where you are now? Is it on where you are right now - a place that you may want to stay in without having to change anything?
God calls us to step out by faith into a future that is unknown. God wants us to trust that God will provide for us as we take that journey of faith. Look up. Look to God. And be freed to imagine a better future not only for yourself, but for all of God's good creation.
