Between Here and There | Called Into the Unknown

A prayer, so let's pray together. God of the journey, we pray that you would be our guide, that we might look to you, whatever transition or life's path is in front of us, and that you might speak a new word to us this morning, and that the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, our God. Amen. Well, I, one of my rhythms as I prepare a sermon, is I kind of like do the scripture preparation, I do kind of like my main points that I'm going to do, and then I look for stories, like I like things stories bring examples, and I have stories, either from my personal life, or I think about movies, or books that I have, and I actually realized something new about myself this week, which probably shouldn't surprise me at all, but you know, sometimes you realize this about yourself at some point, but my stories that I like, the movies that I like, the books I like, are very similar, because I started to look at what is a story that I have, you know, that I googled it, and I'm kind of like looking through what's a story that begins with a character that embarks on a journey of an unknown destination, and you can already imagine a number of movies that go like this, but some of my favorites were like already the top of the list, you have Star Wars, right? You have Luke Skywalker, who begins as this like outskirt guy, and then all of a sudden moves to become a Jedi. You have Lord of the Rings, one of the best ones, and Frodo begins, you know, like as just a little hobbit, and you know, and then he goes on his journey. You're so many..

there's a book called The Road, is one of my favorite, that popped up on the list. It's all these stories of characters that embark on a journey without particularly knowing exactly where they're going and exactly what's going to unfold, and it turns out that that's my niche.

In fact, it's so much so my niche that if I kind of know what's going to happen, I start to check out of that story or movie too quickly. My household has been dealing with, like, some weird sickness that my wife picked up at Queens, where she's a nurse at, and she got it a few weeks ago, and it just went through our household. So, our first few weeks of summer have been spent watching movies on the couch, right, because we're just like kind of awake, we're there, and we're watching movies, and so we've gotten through any of the good ones, like from childhood, that Hudson's been like paddling through, and now we're on to random ones on Netflix. One of the random ones on Netflix that we picked up was Greenland.

They've never seen the movie Greenland. It's like one of those movies where you know there's like a meteor that's coming and everything's gonna end, and my wife was sitting there on the couch, and like, probably 10 times, my wife is like, are you gonna watch the movie with us? And I go, I am watching the movie, but I have my laptop up, and I'm getting stuff done, and she goes, you're not watching it, you're on your laptop. I go, yeah, it's because I know what's gonna happen next, and I told her what's gonna happen next, and she's like, why do you ruin the movies for me, right? And I go, well, it's just too predictable, I gotta entertain myself, because what's gonna happen in this movie.

Sorry, if you liked the movie, it is an entertaining movie, but it is very predictable. And so the idea is that, like, she liked it, and she goes, 'You know, Brian, I like movies that I can predict. That's why I like rom-com movies, and I like movies like this. Just enjoy it with us, and that's when I realized, oh yeah, I have a niche of a type of movie, and it's not this, it's ones that are unpredictable ones that have story plots that you don't know what's going to happen, and also that have these main characters that go on this journey.

Yeah, so some of you might be with my wife, and some of you might be with me, and you probably know who wins the movie choices in our household, usually. Needless to say, we don't get to watch on my list as often as it should, but that's okay. The idea, though, is that there is this like story that is compelling for many people that doesn't necessarily know where it's headed, and if there's anything that you know about this story from the Old Testament is this is probably the beginning one might argue of God's true story within the narrative of scripture. We have the beginning of Genesis, where God creates everything and brings rhythm out of chaos, but there's this other times where God's dealing with humanity and creation as a whole, as a whole, so you know you have the stories of Noah's Ark, and you have the stories of Babel, and you, but it's all about humanity in general, and then the Bible pivots at this point in Genesis chapter 12 to go from dealing with a people as a whole to dealing with a people in particular, and that in particular begins with God's what's often kind of termed as God's chosen people, which is the people that later become the people of Israel, but begin with this choosing of Abraham and Sarai, and God, and so this is where it is, and there's so much to unpack. Talk about the beginning of this story, but I think one of the primary things that you might see is not too surprising, like a lot of good stories. It starts with this main character who embarks on a journey of an unknown destination. God calls Abram and Sarai first and foremost to leave where they were, and to go on a journey, and they don't know exactly where they're going, other than they know that God is going to guide them, that God is going to guide them, and you know, people get mixed up all too often about what it means to be chosen by God, like to be God's chosen people, because they think it's like something that they've earned at some point, and in fact, there's a Bible scholar from my divinity school time that says that this is the biggest mistake that Christians and Jews would make, is that the choosing of Abram and Sarai was a choice that, like, rested on them for some worth that they had, but instead it's not about choosing Abram and Sarai. It's about calling Abram and Sarai, and calling is a very important distinction in that word, because calling requires some sort of follow with that. Chosen kind of makes it seem like I can be here and be stagnant, like I'm chosen as I am, and of course God loves us as we are, but God calls us into this relationship to be a blessing to all the world, which is essentially what Abram and Sarai do. Just a few weeks ago, we were unpacking during the post Easter time what it means to kind of be the church, and we kind of explored the Nicene Creed together, the foundational documents, and if you remember the first word that was used for the church in the ancient world was Ekklesia, Ekklesia, which that word in Greek literally means the gathering of those called, the gathering of those called see the story of God and God's people has always been a story of God calling a people from where they were and where they were going, God calls Abram and Sarai, God calls Moses out of the comfort of where he was within the like Pharaoh's house, and then calls him into a story that was bigger than what he knew. God calls the prophets out from where they were into something that God had for them.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

God calls the disciples from being tax collectors and fishermen to a journey of following Jesus. God calls each and every one of us to follow, but that follow is critical, because we don't always know where we're going, and all of those characters that I mentioned, and I covered a lot of biblical ground, all of those characters, the destination was unknown, where they were going was not clear. The only thing was clear was that God had called them by name and invited them on a journey.

Just last week I talked about rhythms and the new rhythms that we find ourselves in with summer as my household and all sorts of different things, but I know that many people in this room have new rhythms of their lives right now, whether it's a new chapter in their career, whether it's new time with a kid that has graduated and gone off to college, or whether it's kids now done with college and hopefully starting a career, whether it's weddings, whether it's new births that are happening, or whether it's end of lifetimes as well of new chapters where you're caregiving for someone for so long and now have moved into a new chapter after that person has passed, and the thing is, is as much as I love stories of people on these journeys, I hate being on that journey. Anyone else on this right that moment of transition when you realized you have been called, and maybe you didn't realize that you were called, that maybe it hit you, and you're called into something new, is a moment where you're like, God, why am I on this path and this journey now? Where am I? I'm lost, I'm confused, and I don't like it because I am uncomfortable. I love movies that have unpredictable futures, but I hate being a character in said movie, and yet, and yet, that's the story of God's people. That's the story of God's people to be called into something that we're not sure of, to be called and sent into this new chapter of our lives, and so if you can resonate with this transit moment of transition, that's where we're going to be at for the next few weeks together, this story of going from here. To there, and what we can learn along that journey, and how God might teach us something during this time that sometimes is uncomfortable, but as we begin there, we'll talk a number of, highlight a number of pieces, but as we begin there, there's a lot that we can learn just from the beginning of this journey with Abram and Sarai, and one of the keys on here, no matter how uncomfortable it is, no matter how difficult the journey that you find yourself in, this new moment of transition in your life, there is a primary key with it, that God is with you, and that God will be enough for you, for whatever that means, it might not be what you think should be enough, might not be the companionship that you want, it might not be the sort of financial stability that you want, it might not be the easy career you're hoping to step into, but it will be enough, because God is with you, because God is with you, there's a, we could go in for, like, a many, many classes about this, but there's a phrase that I'm cautious about, and that is, God's got a plan for this, right? God's got a plan for this, and there's.. it's a.. I'm cautious about it, because it unravels a lot of theological issues, if you start to think about it, because you start thinking that God has a plan for this moment in transition, and God's willing all of these things to happen. Well, if things bad along that journey happen, now you have to all.

Anyway, we'll get that. We don't know exactly what God's plan is.

We don't know what God's will is. We don't know, does God know what's gonna happen tomorrow?

Does God bring some of the things in our life? We don't know those things. We know that God gives us Jesus, and we know that God promises to always be with us, to always be with us.

And people take lots of comfort sometimes in saying, well, God's got a plan for this, and it always just makes me kind of like, just don't go there, that's fine. If you want comfort from that, that's okay. And also, I know more important, the emphasis throughout the Bible is not as much about the plan as much as it's about the covenant, the covenant that God covenants with us, promises to be with Abram and Sarai. God doesn't promise this is what it's going to look like. God promises to be with them and to bless them and to what make them a blessing to the world around.

So, no matter where you're going, God is promising that in this call that God will bless you, and that doesn't mean good things always, right? But that God will be with you and bless you, and God will invite you to be a blessing. So, for me, it's less about trusting God's plan, and instead it's about learning to discern, learning to discern next steps, and to trust and believe God is with us. I know a lot of people who enter into a moment of transition or a new chapter in life, and they have a mantra that I had that I wish I would listen to some of my elders back when I was in college, but the idea is that, like, things will slow down when this happens right, or I'll find a little bit more peace when I get to this chapter of my life, right, but the only thing I have learned is that things just as exactly as my kupuna and elders have said is just continue to speed up almost and continue to move faster, I couldn't believe it just the other day, it's graduation season, and I have kids that were like contemporaries of my kids in North Carolina when I was a pastor, downtown Chapel Hill, that are graduating high school and going to college. I was like, what is happening, and now my kids are closer to that point than they were to preschool, and it just moved from one thing to another to another, and I know that people can get trapped in this journey, in this moment of transition, with a mindset of when this happens, it will be better, right? When I get to that destination, it's what you know, when PCS, this PCS move is done, it's going to be better, right? When I, you know, my kids are all finally off into college, it'll be better, or you know, like it'll be more peaceful, or when I get done with this like messy, complicated breakup of a relationship, it's going to be better, but the only thing I have become more aware of is that the journey is where God's going to invite us to find a true sense of peace and a true sense of this like presence of God with us, and so I don't think it's that surprising that Abraham and Sarah, or Abraham and Sarai, on this journey build altars on the journey, right, they. Knew that where they built this altar, that first altar to worship God, wasn't going to be their destination, but along the way they remembered these moments, they took a moment to praise God in the midst of the journey that they're in, that they found peace in the uncertainty and so I think that for me that's an invitation for many of us in this time, from here to there. How are we finding those altars, those moments where we can praise God, even when we're not at the destination that we're looking for? What are the ways that we wake up in the morning to reflect on gratefulness and thankfulness for this place.

What are the people in front of me, the relationships that I have right now that I can invest in that God can teach me, and most importantly, most importantly, what are the ways that I will let God fulfill God's covenant that began with God's people with Abraham and Sarai today, and what I mean by what was the fulfillment of that covenant. We go back to Genesis, it begins with this, says in verse three, well, actually, verse two. I will make you a great nation, and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing. You will be a blessing. And then it goes into this phrase, this like poem: I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will be blessed because of you, because of you. This friends is the story of God and God's people. It's to be called onto a journey where we're in that journey, remembering God throughout, not hoping for the destination, but trusting God in the midst of the journey from here to there, and allowing God's covenant to be fulfilled in us, which is to be a blessing.

It's always been the covenant that we exist, that we're called so that we might be a blessing to the world around us, and that blessing can look like lots of things at every different chapter of our life. That blessing can be the time in our lives when we have the energy and the time to volunteer and to do all the things. That blessing can be like those kupuna that I wish I would have listened to when I was younger, that were set, you know, giving me pearls of wisdom, telling me life's not going to slow down as much as I'm saying yes it will next, next month when I'm done with this, right, teaching us on how to remember the stories in the midst, how are we letting God use us to be a blessing from here to there, which we're all on that journey. Some of us are just in a time of uncertainty with it, or a time of newness and transition, but all of us are called by God to be a fulfillment of God's covenant to bless the world. It's why we gather around the communion table, and the story continues, and we say, God has given us God's self, and I make the prayer that only the pastors get to pray, which it says, "Bless us by the power of your Holy Spirit, that those of us gathered in this space, and that the bread and cup might be for us your very body and your very presence, so that we may be your body of Christ for the world, that we may be it, so we don't know where the story is going to end, but we know how God has called us along the way, invite us to recognize, to build the altars, to praise God, and most importantly, in this journey from here to there, wherever we find ourselves in the mix, to be a blessing to all the world.

Amen. Well, I am grateful this morning that we have Carol, our organist, who's back with us.

She was on vacation for a few weeks on a cruise, and then she was recovering from a sickness on that cruise, and now she is back with us, and she's going to be leading us in a time of prayers of the people. We'll have a liturgy on the screen before you that'll move from prayers of all the earth and the nation to our local community and to those that are near and dear to our hearts this morning as we continue to lift up those.

We know in prayer, I want to invite us to continue to lift up Don Raymond and his family with the passing of June. We'll be celebrating June's life on july 3 at 230 here in the sanctuary visitation and 3pm service.

Also, want to pray for Carol's husband, Jack, who is up at Castle, and we'll pray for him during this time as well, so let us pray together, I.