Series: July 2025
Speaker: Rob McClellan
Today's Sermon
"On the Road: Where Are You Going?"
On The Road: Where Are You Going?
The journey, it’s among the most commonly employed images for life. We’re on a journey. We have faith journeys. Enjoy the journey. It’s not the destination; it’s the journey. There are all these sayings.
Today we begin a series “On the Road,” in which we explore what it means to leave one thing and head toward another. We will do a few Sundays on this topic now, and then, because of the church calendar, pause and return to it in the new year, which is actually quite appropriate, since life’s journeys come in fits and starts.
Some of our journeys are chosen – a new location, a new job, a new role in life. Others are forced upon us – a new diagnosis, loss of a role, of a relationship, having to move, forced migration, metaphorical or literal. They say this will be the century of migration. Our present way of dealing with this which can be described as both chaotic and cruel does not bode well for how we will face this shared global journey.
We are all on the road in some form or another so let us learn how to journey as God would have us.
The scripture passage that begins our series, Genesis 12:1-9, begins with the Hebrew Lech lecha, “Go, you.” Has God ever told you to go? How did you know? Did you feel ready? Did you have someone with whom to go that road? Did you meet any angels along the way? Any devils? What choices did you make at various forks in the road? Did you ever circle back? What about getting lost? What did lessons did you gain? What innocence was lost? They say you shouldn’t ask more than three questions in a row if you don’t want to dizzy your audience, but dizzy us the journey sometimes does.
When we move outwardly there is so much potential for inward movement. I once took a class focused entirely on the spatial locations of the New Testament book of Acts. It was fascinating, for looking at the text spatially reveals that so much of the action, so many transformational moments happen in “spaces between spaces” such as entryways to buildings, the gate outside of towns, and, of course, on the road itself. Just like Apostle Paul, we often “see the light” while on the road.
Let’s, then, walk through this sacred story with more attention than we might sometimes, because a good journey should increase our attentiveness. Abram is told to set out, “Go, you…”
Now the Lordsaid to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house
Did Abram choose his journey? Even when on the surface we have choices, what deeper forces drive us? Like so much of the sacred text, we can read this passage one levels upon levels. It is literally the country where Abram’s father lived, the house in which he grew up. Many of us have left our parents’ house physically, and there are times when we must leave them on much deeper levels. Can you recall when you left the ways of your parents or family or homeland? Were these blessed departures or tinged with pain? What did you need to leave behind for you to grow up, or heal? What was the first thing you packed that you knew you must bring to remind you who you were and where you came from? What things have you carried that you just can’t shake as hard as you may try?
(Go) to the land that I will show you.
This may be one of the more challenging aspects of the journey, hearing it’s time to go, not knowing where exactly you are going, and yet trusting while learning to listen to this greater voice. I just spent a couple of weeks on continuing education, where among other things, I completed some course work for a coaching certification, which will help me help others discern where they are being led. Coaching uses secular language, but I find it very spiritual, very theological, for it is based on a trust that the ability to answer to one’s question lies within. Some call this the light, others God, but whatever “it” is, it is with us and can show us the way. As part of the studying, I did some practice, working with college students who were trying to figure out where they should be going, whether they were following the path that was truly for them or simply what their “father,” and it’s often their father, wanted.
2I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great…
Do we believe this, the promise, our own greatness? I suppose many do, but this is not great in the sense of fame or power but in the sense of goodness. The First Nations New Testamentsubstitutes the phrase “The good road” for what we call “The kingdom of God” or “The kingdom of heaven.” Follow the good road and you will be blessed. Do we trust it?
…so that you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’
We forget that the purpose of our greatness is to be a blessing. Many Christians, and Christians are my main concern, seem to have forgotten that we exist to bless others, not to glorify or enrich ourselves. Our purpose is not to curse others, to judge them or conquer them. I don’t believe it’s to convert them. Conversion is the work of the Spirit. We are to bless them, which likely converts us both. God says to Abram, “in you allthe families of the earth” not your tribe, not your race, not your class, not your religion, and not country, and maybe not even your species “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
4 So Abram went, as the Lordhad told him; and Lot went with him.
Abram didn’t go alone; he brought some kin, for he needed some of his people along for the ride.
Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
Do you ever think you’re too old to step out in faith? Think again. We discard people are retirement in our culture because we are obsessed with economic production. How limiting. We routinely mistake as impoverished what can be rich legs of the journey. My spouse met up with her college roommate while we were on the road this past week. Her roommate had just sent her youngest off to college and was remarking how much she dislikes the term “empty nester.” The nest is not empty; it’s different. There is plenty of fullness. Our seasons all entail both loss and gain. We leave nests all the time and we build new ones. Chicks come and go and we hatch new ones of all sorts well beyond our years, just ask Abram’s wife Sarai who “gave birth” well past 75.
5Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, 6Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7Then the Lordappeared to Abram, and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’
It would be tempting to glance over this part, but we must make mention of it, the notion of the so-called “chosen people” going and inhabiting the land that belonged to others. That notion that one people’s journey means another people’s displacement is a tale too often lived out. We are all on land won that exact way. Our forbearers thought it was God’s destiny. Was it or did we mishear the divine voice? It continues to be lived out today. What we call “The Holy Land” has been taken back and forth back and forth, with violence upon violence, often tied up with the name of God. The day I drafted this dozens of Gazans were gunned down while lined up at a recognized feeding station. We must be careful how we interpret how we came to be where we are in life as God’s clearly discerned will. My wife just sent me an article about a study done at Cal that showed how individuals who benefited from a rigged game of monopoly took credit for the success they were handed and used it to exert dominance over others.[1] We should be careful what we assume is our God-given right.
Having acknowledged this, we should also be careful not to overread our own myth history as it’s been given to us in scripture, and I do not use “myth” to mean untrue, only to signify it’s how we make meaning of how we got here. People look back and understand God’s hand in their own arrival. Thanks be to God, sometimes they go back and look at it again and again and draw new conclusions about how they got there, who was harmed, and how to be a blessing where they are and where they’re going.
So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
What’s the first act upon arriving at the gift of a new place, a new stage? The building of an altar, an act of worship, a ritual act of thanks. Everywhere we go, we are to build altars of thanksgiving as we remember what we have endured, the mileage we have traveled, the ones we have been with and the one who has seen us through. What is your, what are our, rituals of altar building? This past week I heard someone talk of their affection for that familiar song, “They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love.” They might know us by that if we were better at building altars, things that remind us the world and those in it are sacred.
8From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lordand invoked the name of the Lord.
In this stage of the journey, Abram takes up residence in the hill country. Is this so he can see a little better, get a better vantage point, a new perspective? Is he looking out cautiously for enemies? Is he staking out the most fertile land to pursue? Does he just like the view and the mountain air? Has he just succumbed to the age-old attempt of us all to get as close to God in heaven as we can, for life down here in the valley can be tough? More dizzying.
Steady yourself and notice that Abram does not build a mansion, not even an in-law unit. Abram pitches a tent. He knows he is not done being on the move. Our permanence, of course, is an illusion, though that’s not to say there isn’t great value in putting down roots. Metaphorically, if not literally, our journeys never stop for long. Our mountaintop experiences do, and maybe that’s the meaning here. At some point, these moments of heavenly ecstasy lead us, if we are faithful, to come down off the mountain. Contrary to what I have told those with whom I have walked, there are few truly flat roads.
9And Abram journeyed on by stages towards the Negeb.
Abram journeyed on by stages. One of the chief sources of anxiety is not what we have to face; it’s the feeling we have to face it all at once. We can almost always handle the next thing, and then the next. One of the really valuable lessons of coaching is that it helps people gain clarity about where they want to go and of the fact they just need to worry about the next step they need to take to get them there. We journey in stages. What stage are you on? What step is required of you next? That’s it. Then worry about the next one. Whether we like it or not there are steps we cannot yet take—they’re for later on the journey and we won’t reach them if we don’t take the ones before us well—so what is the road we are presently on, who is with us, who is hurting alongside of the road, and how do we need to learn to walk together? As always, the biblical “you” has both personal and communal implications.
So, we have set out on a new journey on this series, but of course every new journey is a continuation of the old. The last series we did was on finding our true selves. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg reminds us that Lech lecha, which can be translated as “Go, you” which is how Abram is launched on this journey, may also be rendered, “Go,toyourself.”[2]Every true journey, every journey of spirit, is, in essence, a journey to the true self. If it’s well-discerned, it’s a journey home, even if it means leaving one’s household. What is the home at the heart or our being ? These are questions we will be asking now and in the days to come. Let us pray for what we will encounter on the road, and, as they say, “make the way by walking.” Make the good road by journeying well.
Amen.