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Twenty years ago a friend of mine was thinking about taking a class at Wartburg Seminary. It took a whole year for her to work up enough courage to take one class. When she finally did it, she discovered that she absolutely loved studying theology! She loved every lecture and every discussion group. She read all the assigned readings and then some. The following semester she took two classes. The semester after that she took another two. This went on for two years and she was still enrolled as a "special student." She was too chicken to enroll in a degree program. One day her favorite professor pulled her aside and said, "When are you going to take the plunge?" She played stupid and said, "What do you mean?" He said, "When are you going to get into a degree program? How many years are you going to spend just sticking your toes in the water?" He was right. She was afraid to make the commitment. I thought of her when I came across these words in the writings of Joseph Campbell. It is a piece of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation. It goes like this: "As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think."

It took my friend three years to work up the courage to jump. For Abraham it took only as long as the time needed to gather his herds and pull up his tent stakes.

Abraham must have been an amazing man. God tells him to leave his country, his relatives, his father's house, and go. But where? Abraham doesn't know exactly where. God just says, "Get up and go." Abraham got up and went. What kind of person can do this? And what kind of God would ask it?

Abraham, like all the patriarchs and matriarchs, was a mixed bag. But Abraham's faith was so remarkable that he is a model for us all. He is so great a figure that he is called in scripture "the friend of God." Abraham was also clumsy. He tried to pass off his wife Sarah as his sister. Pharaoh got mad at him as a result. Later on, in the new country, Abraham divided a parcel of land with his nephew, Lot. It was the old, "I'll divide, you pick" strategy. Lot got the good land and Abraham got only scrub brush. Abraham came out short on that deal. Frederick Buechner said that if there are two kinds of clumsy oafs, one who goes through life spilling soup and another who is the one always getting spilled on, then Abraham is the one always getting spilled on.1 And here's another fact about Abraham which isn't mentioned very often. Just remember for a minute all the sermons or Bible studies in which Sarah has been criticized for laughing. When she is ninety years old she is told by an angel that she will give birth to a son. (That would sound funny to most of us if we were ninety.) Read Genesis 17:17. Here Abraham is told by God that he will be the father of a son. Abraham laughs so hard that he falls on his face laughing!

Abraham was a mixed bag, like us. What makes Abraham so unusual is his absolutely unshakable confidence in God. He leaves security behind him. He has no road map, no known destination. All of that is in the mind of God. Abraham is completely dependent on God's leading. There is no flight plan, no AAA route, no itinerary, no clear destination. There is only God. God says, "Get up and go. I will show you." And Abraham does it. He just turns around from that conversation and pulls up his tent pegs. Amazing.

Abraham and Sarah were wandering Arameans. They are also our spiritual ancestors. We are nomads, in a sense. We are on a journey as God's people. We are always searching for our own Promised Land. We stumble along. We make mistakes. We are at least as clumsy as Abraham. But the journey pulls us on. And the journey itself is very important. For Abraham and for us, it is not just in the future land that God promises to be with us, but in the present journey.

M. Scott Peck talks about this journey in his book, The Road Less Traveled. Peck says if we are going to undertake such a journey with God, we must be willing to be personally challenged. We must risk a radical openness.2 It's easy to say that and so hard to do. But Abraham did it. The question is, can we? Can we risk being that open to God? Peck also says most of us decide not to listen, not to hear God's call. The Bible says many are called, but few are chosen. We could rephrase that and say: All of us are called to this risky journey with God, but few of us choose to listen to the call. That kind of closeness to God is scary. It's a call to merge our will with God's will, to become one with God. It may mean giving up the things we cling to and reordering our priorities. Abraham did it. He just pulled up his tent stakes and went. He chose to enter into an adventure with God.

Songwriters and poets have written about this great journey with God. You hear about it in the song, "To Dream The Impossible Dream." The words go like this: "To dream the impossible dream. To fight the unbeatable foe. To right the unrightable wrong. To reach the unreachable star." The journey pulls us into adventure and action on behalf of others. Another song about the journey is "Climb Every Mountain." It too is about risking the journey with God.

Some of the most moving words of poetry have been inspired by this journey. Here are the ending lines from Walt Whitman's poem, "Passage to India."

Sail forth - steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we risk the ship, ourselves and all.
Oh my brave soul!
Oh farther, farther sail!
Oh daring joy, but safe! Are they not all the seas of God?
Oh farther, farther sail!


What kind of person would actually do that? (What kind of person could resist it?) What kind of God would ask?

The answer - at least to some degree - is found in the kind of book the Bible is. It's a different kind of book from typical prose. We do not find stories about God in this book. We find stories about people. And it is in the stories about people that we discover God and begin to understand God. We learn about God through God's relationship with the people. In the story of Abraham we learn about Abraham, and through his experiences we also learn about God. We learn that Abraham's journey was so important that God went along. God said to Abraham, "I will show you." Our own journeys, our spiritual growth is so important to God that God comes along!

Each person's journey is important. The Hebrew verb "to journey" is an interesting one. It isn't simply "Abraham journeyed," as our Bibles say. It actually says, in Hebrew, Abraham pulled up his tent stakes and went ahead. A verb like that comes up again in the New Testament in the opening verses of the Gospel of John. The words are very familiar. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." That verb "dwelt" is also a "tenting" verb. It says literally, "God pitches his tent among us." So, the God who caused Abraham to pull up his tent stakes is the very God who puts them down again. Only this time it is God's tent stakes, not Abraham's. God has pitched a tent right here in our midst in the man, Jesus. That is a risk--taking God, a God who leads us in the journey by coming to us first.

There is a story of a family whose house caught fire one night. The young son was forced to climb out onto the roof. His father stood below on the ground with outstretched arms. He was calling to his son, "Jump, son, jump! I'll catch you!" But all the boy could see between himself and his dad was fire and smoke and the blackness of night. The child was filled with panic. He shouted back, "But, Dad, I can't see you!" The father replied, "But I can see you and that is what matters."

In our journey, God can see us and that is what really matters. But God doesn't just see us. God is right here with us in the journey. We, like Abraham, can risk pulling up our tent stakes and following because God's tent is here in our midst. The sign - the guarantee - of his presence is there in the cross. Let's take the risk and jump. Amen.

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1. Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 3.

2. M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978), p. 310.