“All the Right Moves”

Genesis 12:1-9

June 5, 2005

Saint Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John A. Fleming

My brother, his wife, and my namesake nephew are moving in with us tomorrow night. Pray for me! David and I haven’t lived in the same house since I was twelve and he was eighteen. That year, 1980, is when he left home to go to college. I am hoping that he won’t chase me around the back yard like he did when we were kids. On one of those chases I ran smack dab into the middle of my mother’s ceramic bird feeder and smashed it into a hundred pieces. I am hoping that he won’t tease me or taunt me like he used to. One thing I know isn’t going to happen. He isn’t going to throw me out of his room. No, not this time around. If he tries to do that, I will play the trump card and throw him out of our house.

Most of you have heard me speak of my family and so you know that my brother also is a United Methodist minister. For the past five years, he has been the Senior Pastor at the First United Methodist Church in Jacksonville. And now he is moving. When United Methodist ministers move, at least in Arkansas, we all move on the same day. This year’s date, set by the bishop, is June twenty-first. If you live in a church’s house, a parsonage, the expectation is for you to leave the house clean, in good shape, and to be out by noon. So any repairs that have to happen to the house, any painting that needs to be done is usually done while the old pastor is there and before the new one moves in. You have to be out by noon because the new pastor and his family move in early in the afternoon. Rev. Rock Jones, a United Methodist minister once said that leaving one place before noon and arriving at the other in the afternoon is like performing a funeral in the morning and getting married in the afternoon. I like that. That makes sense to me. Susie and I have never had to move out of places quickly. We have been in places where the minister before me moved early. Or, in the case of our parsonage at St. Paul, the house had been vacant for a few months. I am always glad to move my belongings gradually.

Some churches in Arkansas don’t have parsonages. Instead, they give their pastors monthly checks, housing allowances, that help them find either a place to own or one to rent. That is the case in both the church that my brother is leaving and the one that he is going to, in Bella Vista. He quickly sold his house in Jacksonville. He has to be out of that house this weekend. His new house in Bella Vista is ready. He is moving into it this weekend. But he is the pastor on duty at Jacksonville until June 21^st. And the commute from Bella Vista to Jacksonville would be a killer, so Susie and I invited him and his family to live with us for these three weeks. Did I ask for you to pray for us?

As it turns out, United Methodist ministers are not the only ones on the move these days. I had the chance to go to Memphis last Saturday to watch a round of the Fed Ex St. Jude’s golf tournament. I went with one of our church members. We drove interstate forty both to and from Memphis. For four hours we talked and watched cars pass on both sides of the interstate. I stopped counting, but I think that the two of us saw no less than three or four U-Haul trucks and trailers making their way towards Memphis or back towards Little Rock, on their way somewhere, perhaps to start a new life. It is also the time when fresh out of college people, with their dreams in front of them, are setting out for new places, their first jobs, and a new life.

Just this week, I read some statistics, provided by a past census about people’s moving patterns. The facts and the figures showed that on the average people move every five years. Homeowners stay a little loner than those who rent. The stats showed that homeowners move every 8.1 years. The statistics also showed that renters tend to move every 2.1 years. The census, these figures, tell us how often people are moving, but they do not tell us why they are moving.

We could guess. One of the families in our church just moved away, to Memphis, after being a part of our faith family for some five or so years. They were happy here, but she was not thrilled with her job. She went looking and found a better one. It may be the job of her dreams. The problem is that the job is in Memphis. And so this family has moved there. Sometimes we move because of new jobs. Another family in this church has their house for sale. They lived catty cornered to the first family. The house that they bought was just fine for the two of them, when they first moved to Little Rock. But now their three bedroom house is not big enough for the two kids that have joined their family in the past four years. Sometimes we move because we run out of space. I know other people who move because their marriage is over, so they need a new place and a fresh start. I know other people, quite honestly, who move because they need a change of scenery; they itch for something new, something different and sometimes a new house does it. But moving for the sake of moving, I am just not so sure about that!

Our scripture lesson for this morning is taken from the twelfth chapter of Genesis. There are three cycles of stories that are part of the Genesis narrative. There is what we have come to call the Abraham cycle, the Jacob cycle, and the Joseph cycle of stories. Where one of the cycles ends, the other begins.

Our lesson for this morning is the beginning of Abraham’s cycle, or Abram as he is called before the name change in the seventeenth chapter happens. Just before we arrive at our lesson, we learn two important things. First, we learn that Abram’s father, Terah, has died at the ripe old age of two hundred and five years young. Second, we learn that Abram’s wife, Sarai, cannot have children. I understand that Abram and Sarai, mere kids in their seventies, were asked to leave their comfortable life in Ur of the Chaldees, the valley nestled there between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. That is the home that they left. God called them to leave that land of ease and luxury, to become nomads, not knowing where the future was for them, but trusting the promise that God gave them, that the future would be good. We know that it is as life of luxury because of the details that the writer of Genesis provides. He tells us that they took some of their family, their possessions, and the people that they had gathered in while they lived in Haran. That means those who served them, who worked in their house and in their field. There is no hesitation like there are with some of the other people that God called to go somewhere. Abram doesn’t offer up any excuses like Moses whose life was just as comfortable. One of Moses’ excuses was that he was not an eloquent speaker. Running out of excuses, Moses finally said, “Lord, please send someone else.” Abram was not like young Jeremiah. Jeremiah was only a boy when God called him to be a prophet. Jeremiah thought that he was fulfilling his calling by working in the church. Jeremiah offered up this excuse, “Ah Lord God, I am only a boy.” God promises him what he promised Abraham and what he promised Isaiah and what he promised Jeremiah and what he promises all of us, that the future will be good.

You know, it takes only the slightest imagination to see in Abram’s story an example for all of our lives. All of us are looking for a promised land of some kind. Your life and my life is a matter of moving from where we are now, often through some kind of a struggle or a journey, to where we want to be. It takes only a few accumulated years for us to know that life is such that if reach a state of where everything is finally the way that you want it to be, and you are living now in your own Ur of Chaldees, the call may come for you to move into an unknown future. It is often a future that you do not want. It comes sometimes because of the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a job, or the loss of a marriage, or the loss of something else that causes you to leave where you are now. You have everything the way that you want it. You have worked hard to get it that way, and then it happens. Life moves you into an unknown future and when that happens, then we are all Abraham and we are all Sarah, with a choice. We can hunker down in fear and resentment because all of this has happened to us. We can complain that life is not fair. Or, we can forward in faith, trusting that God is a God who keeps promises. Someone once said that faith properly defined is courage. I want you to see this. Not only does God promise to be with Abraham, he also promises that he will make him into a great nation, that he will bless him and that he himself will be a blessing.

Now before we go home this morning, I want us to see something in Abraham that can help us make all of the right moves. Maybe we should only move if we believe that it is calling. Callings from God are wrapped up in a hint of mystery. Most ministers will admit to you that they have never heard the audible voice of God.. We may never hear the words, ‘Go from your country and your kindred, your clan, your people, and your father’s house.’ I can remember just after Susie and I married, I brought up the subject of moving to Arkansas after seminary. Susie didn’t like the idea and so I tried to convince her. I said, “Susie, I really believe that God is calling us to Arkansas.” Now Susie’s country was Tennessee and she was very close to her kindred, so she looked up at me and said, “That’s funny. God hasn’t said anything to me about it!” You may not hear a voice. It would be great if the voice came. But more often than not, the word comes in a deep inner sense, a feeling that you have that a move is going to be right for you and the ones that you love. It is right in the sense that it will give you a new challenge, a new responsibility, and a new chance to grow. So we should move if we believe that God is calling us to do it.

We should also believe that if that is the case, then the land that God is sending us to is a promised land. The Lord wants Abraham to hit the road not because there is anything wrong with his present land, but so that he will be in a place where the promise will come true. Remember the promise, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” I think that the problem is that we are afraid of the future. We are also afraid of the unknown. And so we don’t go somewhere in our lives or we do not go somewhere in our faith because we are stuck. God calls us to move, but how do we respond? That is up to us.

I am reminded of the Peanuts cartoon strip where Peppermint Patty and Lucy are together. In one of the frames, Peppermint Patty is shown with a new carry on flight bag. Lucy notices it and says to Peppermint Patty, “Patty, your luggage is beautiful. Are you going somewhere?” Peppermint Patty beams with pride, and then she says, “Oh no. I hate going places. I just like luggage!” I wonder what would have happened if Abraham had said that? We, ourselves, have a lot of luggage.

Let me close with something that I ran across. It is what one guy said about following Jesus. “Have you ever noticed how often people in the Bible are changing their addresses? It’s hard to find anyone who is in a serious drama with God who is not on the move. No one ever finds God by nailing life down. Maybe that is because faith is always discovered along the way. You certainly cannot follow Jesus without moving, and you can’t move without leaving something behind. Some disciples left their families behind, others their jobs. Others were asked to leave their sins, or their wealth, or even their grief. Jesus is always moving and we are not asked to be clear about where we are going. We are only asked to turn our eyes upon Jesus. Let us pray.

(The last quote of this sermon was printed in Homiletics magazine, online edition, June 6, 1999. The quote is original to Craig Barnes. Craig wrote the article, "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus," in reNEWS, October 1997, 23. Special thanks is also given to the June 6, 1999 edition of Homiletics for some facts, figures, and ideas for this sermon).