Looking For A Few Good Leaders

Genesis 12:1-9; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

June 8, 2008, Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In a statement about Abram Christian essayist Dan Clendinen writes on his website, journeywithjesus.net:

Four thousand years ago a family of semitic nomads left Ur of the Chaldeans, perhaps in southeastern Iraq near Nasariyah, and settled in Haran, Turkey, on the Syrian border. In Haran the father Terah died. His son Abraham received a divine command to continue his journey: "Leave your country, your people, and your father's household and go to the land I will show you" (Genesis 12:1).

Believing that he had heard the very voice of God, at the age of seventy-five "Abram left, as the Lord had told him" (Genesis 12:4). He couldn't have known it at the time, but when he left his home, he altered human history ever after.

Believing that he had heard the voice of God, Abram was willing to let his faith make a difference. And today I want to talk about being people who follow in the Abrahamic tradition of following their faith and becoming leaders of faith in their own traditions. What some people do not understand is that Abraham was a leader in three different traditions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In fact every year Chautauqua Institution where I go for vacation spends one week celebrating the Abrahamic Tradition that the three monotheistic religions share. Let me also say that he was not known as Abraham until after God made the covenant with him.

We have to wonder what it was that induced Abram to listen to this voice that he heard. Charles Pellegrino a number of years ago wrote a book entitled Return to Sodom and Gomorrah: Bible Stories from Archaeologists. In it he talks about the area of Haran and the whole Middle East and desert area. He writes:

No, this land was not always so cruel to living things. Even in geologically recent times, during the height of the last ice-age about 16 thousand years ago, there were cloud banks overhead, and the rains, for more than 5 thousand years, came regularly to these hills. From an airplane you can still trace the paths of the dried streambeds. Ice-age climate must actually have been pleasant on the Egyptian desert, turning the land into a savannah. The same thing was happening far to the northeast, in Iraq’s land of two rivers, but by 4 thousand B.C. the northern glaciers were in retreat, and a great dying began. The grasslands were still disappearing when settlers along Tigris and Euphrates rivers invented writing and started capturing their oral tradition on baked-clay tablets. It is possible that retreating water tables displaced whole populations and that the displacements are recorded in the first books of the Bible as the wanderings of Abraham and Semitic tribes and people.

Some people might feel that this understanding detracts from God’s call to Abram to leave all that was familiar to him. I don’t believe it does. Abram leaves his father’s family and strikes out to who knows where. He lived by faith and his family followed him. If you think about it, most of the great things that have happened came about because someone took a risk. The first settlers of the west in our country risked the unknown; the first astronauts risked the unknowns of space, besides sitting on top of a directed bomb called a rocket. People like Martin Luther King risked putting their lives in danger, dealing with water cannons, and attack dogs believing that it could make a difference. The tax-collector in our Gospel passage today takes a risk that Jesus would befriend him and not judge him, unlike most of the people that he deals with. In the story of the woman with the hemorrhage who touches Jesus’ cloak she risks not only being healed, but also that Jesus would not condemn her. The Pharisee who came to Jesus to ask for healing and life for his daughter not only risks that Jesus might reject him, but also ridicule from his brothers in the synagogue.

In many ways risk is an essential part of faith; being willing to risk that something different then the norm can happen. As Jesus says to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” Blessings on those who are willing to risk that their faith is right. The people in our scriptures today are not people who are saying that it doesn’t take much faith to be a Christian, and I don’t think you will ever hear a true Christian say that. Abram, Paul, and the tax-collector, the woman, and the leader of the synagogue all risked something, and more importantly their risk, or their faith was known by others. So there is the element of possible ridicule behind all of these words and events.

Can we risk that kind of living that says I know that this is not what the world says I should be doing, but it is what I believe God is telling me to do? That is a difficult question to answer. What about us as a church? Are we willing to risk some different things, are we willing to risk being a little busier in order that this church can make a difference in others lives.

One of the interesting things about the Church is that there is usually a core of people, generally much smaller in number than the membership of the church, who do the bulk of the work in a church. They risk spending another night or two out a month believing that their work in the church will make a difference not only in the life of the church, but also in the life of someone out in the community. But there are many more who have gifts to give, gifts that we need, who are not involved. I don’t want you to see this as asking you to serve on a committee, because that is not what I am asking. What I am asking is that you find a way to use your gift in this church’s ministry. We need people with the gift of hospitality to reach out to people within the church and in the community to let others know that God cares about them. We need people with the gift of creating events that bring people together for the fun of it, to be together in fellowship and nurture. We need people willing to see and hear about people who are hurting and finding ways to make a difference in their lives. And the list goes on.

I suppose what I am asking most of all is that people think about risking the belief that God has given them something that can and needs to be shared with others. People on the outside really are watching us. They are looking to see if we have Abrams and Sarahs in this congregation; people who are willing to be led by what they believe. People on the outside are looking in to see if we are afraid or not of living what we believe: that God cares about us and them, that God has a mission for us small as we may be.

The Marine Corp has the motto of looking for a few good leaders. I recall the commercial they used to have of an Indiana Jones character risking all kinds of difficulties in order to obtain a special sword, and when he does he morphs into a proud Marine. The church is also looking for leaders, not just a few, but a whole church of them to show what God can do in one’s life. That is the power of faith and in many ways the church has lost it, or left it up to a few to carry out the role.

It is time for us to reclaim the power of our faith, and there is a lot of power in faith. Jesus said it can move mountains, and I believe it. If a person has faith that they can move a mountain and you give them a shovel or a bulldozer they will move that mountain. How many of us ever thought we would see an African-American candidate for President of the United States? I imagine people like Martin Luther King did, and that is why they risked everything to make it happen. So the question that the passages ask of us today is “What are we willing to risk for God?” Now some may wonder why I’m talking about this today with the summer hiatus coming when programs in the church slow down. I’m doing so because I want people to be thinking about it over the summer. I want people to think about what their gifts are and how they can use them in the ministry of this church. In August the Session and Deacons will be meeting for a retreat to plan goals for the coming program year and it would help us to know what gifts people are willing to use in the ministry of the church. So again, the question is what are we willing to risk for God; an hour on Sunday morning, or something more, or a whole lot more? Amen.

Amen

© 2008 Rev. Dr. Thomas T. Peters