| June 8, 2008 |
Pitching Tents
Abram wasn’t sure where he was going ... but he got up and went. He wasn’t sure what the future held ... but he knew it required him to move. Abram heard God’s call ... and trusted God’s promise of blessing... and left his home in Haran for an unknown land. God said to Abram, “go from your country, go from your family, go from your home to the land ... that I will show you.” The Hebrew word for “go” in this passage is the emphatic form – lek leka – and means “get going!” Abraham was 75 years old at the time ... hardly what we think of as a prime time for re-location to destinations unknown ... but there is no time of life exempt from change ... whether by divine call ... unexpected circumstance, or simply a window of opportunity. God called and promised ... Abram trusted ... and blessing and responsibility for generations was born. Abram did not travel light. He brought his wife, kin, possessions and household ... Along the way, he pitched his tent (presumably many times) ... and, we’re told, “journeyed on in stages.” I like that closing phrase of our text from Genesis, because it comforts and challenges me when I get impatient and want it all at once or seek the security of staying put… the journey will take place … in stages. God is still calling and blessing today. As we move on, mobile, able to change direction, traveling without a map, we dwell in tents, structures of community today are temporary shelters, along the journey. “A wandering Aramean was my father...” The people of God began as wanderers, not in their own land, not rooted in country and community, known by a name which was borrowed from others. Abraham and Sarah, spiritual ancestors of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, were emigrants to an unknown land. Abram stopped “with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he pitched his tent, and there he built an altar to the Lord.” For Abram and his people, the altar was their reminder of who and whose they were. It was a needed stopping point and center-point for their identity as a people in the midst of the journey… it was not their destination. We, too, are tent-pitching folks who need to find places of shelter and refuge from time to time on a journey whose outcome remains unknown. Always there are necessary interruptions -- need for rest, for healing, for restoration of relationship, for remembrance and worship, and the journey continues ... In our Gospel reading from Matthew this morning, Jesus traveled and taught and healed among the people he moved from place to place. In this text, as Jesus was teaching, he was interrupted not once, but twice. A nameless child, the daughter of a leader in the synagogue, had just died. Her grieving father risked interrupting Jesus as he was teaching, knelt before him and asked Jesus to restore his daughter to life. Jesus left what he was doing, and followed the man to the child. But - on their way, a nameless woman also risked approaching Jesus. She had been suffering from bleeding for twelve years ... and this desperate, faithful woman thought, “If I could just touch the fringe of his garment I would be healed.” She risked reaching out. Jesus turned to her ... and told her that her faith had made her well. Then Jesus went in to see the child who had died, took her by the hand, and she got up. A grieving father and a suffering woman each risked reaching out ... trusting a promise and blessing available to them but as yet unseen. According to Leviticus, both the unnamed girl and the unnamed woman were unclean. Anyone who touched the dead or a bleeding woman would also be unclean. Jesus risked and reached across boundaries of custom and prejudice as well as law to restore lives and restore the people of God. Those among us who have known great grief or have sustained great suffering in mind, body, or spirit over time know the experience of being isolated, untouched, invisible. Biblical scholar James Sanders said that in understanding Scripture, “It makes all the difference in the world where you are seated in the text.” His words invite us to go where the pain is, to sit in the seat of those who suffer, to read the law from the vantage point of those who suffer. Oscar Wilde wrote his powerful lamentation and meditation De Profundis, (Out of the Depths) while he was in prison near the end of his life. He writes, “Suffering is one very long moment … and … Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.” In the sorrow of grief, a father risked his position in the community to come to Jesus, and Jesus took his daughter by hand into new life. These stories remind us how quickly and unpredictably moments for healing and transformation come. Everyday unplanned and unscheduled interruptions are opportunities to open our lives and to enter into other’s lives with love’s redeeming, reconciling, restorative touch. For Abram, blessing was the beginning. God said, “I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” “... in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed ...” Abram set out ... not being sure what might happen … but in that journey a people was born. As we risk asking for help when we need it for ourselves and others, as we risk moving out into the world and down into our souls, we remember the blessings we receive … so that we will be blessing for all the families of the earth.
The land that Abram was promised by God, and that became the land of the people of Israel already had people living in it....the Canaanites. Today’s violence has roots millennia old, and will require risking prayer and wisdom and healing and movement from all people for any just and lasting resolution. Let us pray: Send us political leaders ready to dedicate their lives to a just peace for their peoples. Make them courageous, giving security to Israeli’s, granting freedom to Palestinians, and freeing us all from fear. Give us leaders who understand the holiness of your city.
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