Genesis

Do you ever need a Word from the Lord...I mean really need to hear his voice? Maybe you have a huge decision to make and you want to get it right. Say something devastating happens...and you truly hope to know that the Lord is there...that he cares. Do you ever look for his presence, his voice, his fingerprints...anything...to help stave off the desperate fear that there’s really no one out there for you...no God who watches, who listens, who acts?
We’ve all been praying for the J. family because of the loss of John’s mom. This week, one of our members told me that just before she passed, he sat up straight in bed, wide awake, at 4:00AM awakened by a dream about the Jackson family. “Pray for this family,” he was told. So he did. Through the night our brother poured out his prayers for the J’s.

The message of Genesis is that times have always been perilous. Man’s destructive tendencies, coupled with the unbridled power of creation keep us continually hanging over the precipice of annihilation. We are inveterate apocalyptic knob-twisters. God created the building blocks of matter; we figure out how to split them and blow things up in the process. God created genetic coding; we can’t wait to fiddle with eggs and chromosomes. We have sown the biological and environmental and nuclear win...and now we’re praying we don’t reap the whirlwind.
The Bible has always been concerned about the end. This morning we look at a time when the end almost came for us before we even had a chance to really get going. As amazing and upsetting as our own capacity for self-destruction is, it seems even more unsettling that long ago, in the time of a Noah, God chose to wipe out almost all people on earth. Does that strike you as strange?...somehow out of character for God?

It was Abraham who first gave us the notion that faith calls for us to “venture out.” Humans are almost by definition creatures on the move. The word for “human” in the Tibetan language means “one who moves.” Someone once suggested that the scientific name for humans should not be “homo sapiens,” but “homo mobilius.”
Today’s scripture, from the twelfth chapter of Genesis, describes the call of Abraham to move...to travel...to venture out with God. I don’t think there is a more important text in the entire Old Testament. This is where the history of the people of God really begins. This text marks the end of primeval history, and the start of God’s historical relationship with Israel.

The Genesis Creation account. Is it science? Is it a blueprint? Is it an answer against the secular humanists? No, not really. It is proclamation...it is lyric praise...it is song. The Genesis Creation account. Is it antiquated wives= tale? Is it myth? Is it hopeful fable? It is deep, powerful truth.

What kind of dreams trouble the richest and most powerful nation in the world? We have nightmares of scarcity. There isn’t enough to go around. We’re getting behind. We need more...more money, more of the world’s pie, more stuff from Walmart, more security, more oil. We are goaded by our leaders to be a fearful people– afraid of outsiders, afraid of terrorists, keeping one eye on the colored threat level alert. Is this an orange week or is it yellow again? Pick up the papers and it’s Egypt all over again. We’re worried about immigrants in our midst. How did there come to be so many? What can we do to ensure they don’t turn against us... overpower us? Can we send them back, can we build walls around them? Can we continue to keep them in economic bondage without giving them the freedom to find a home among us? And above all else, like the children of Israel in Egypt, our lives center around work. Work has become the major component of our lives. We have become cogs in Pharaoh’s machine. Work and spend money. 40-50-60 hours a week. We have bought into Pharaoh’s brick-making economy. You’re only worth as many bricks as you can produce in a day.

Each week we gather around this table and pull out family stories.  As we re-tell our stories, and read more stories from the Word week by week, a couple of things takes place.  Our ancestors come to life in our midst...they regain their voices, they re-inhabit their places among us...in a very real sense, we re-member them, we once again give them hands and feet and voices and invite them to continue to live among us.  And we remember that we are a part of something larger than ourselves, building upon the foundation of those who have gone before.
    Our readings this morning  remind us that we are a part of a drama that began long, long ago...and will continue for who knows how long after we’re gone.

    I was hesitant to preach a sermon on family dysfunction and forgiveness.  That’s like beating the family dog.  We already know he’s got fleas and passes gas, so why punish him any more?   It’s much more interesting to spend our Sunday mornings talking about flashier issues like war and peace, the ethics of stem cells, the mark of the beast, and a lot of other things we can’t do anything about.  Then I picked up the newspaper.  “Elizabethton Man charged with assaulting ex-wife,” “Area Professional arrested after drunken encounter with girlfriend,” half a page of legal and divorce notices, on an on it goes.