Following Directions

Scripture Genesis 12:1-4   (CEB) 

12 The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your land, your family, and your father’s household for the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing.

3  I will bless those who bless you,
    those who curse you I will curse;
        all the families of the earth
            will be blessed because of you.”

4 Abram left just as the Lord told him, and Lot went with him. Now Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran.

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Many of you are well aware that I am directionally challenged. If I name a place  and point toward it, I will invariably have pointed in the opposite direction of where that place actually is.  And that includes the church parking lot while I am standing in my office.  Directions that include words like North or South or whatever are pretty much useless.  Left and right are good.  So are landmarks. Tell me something like “go 6.2 miles on that road and turn right at the orange house.”   So it should come as no surprise that I rely heavily on Siri to help me get from point A to point B and back again.  Yesterday as I was about to head home from Vacaville where I had been attending a mandatory anti-racism training, I stopped for gas near Interstate 80 and then told Siri “get directions home.”   I mean, I knew the directions were basically “take 80 to Sacramento, turn right at 99 and follow that to Selma.”  Easy Peasy.  But you know, I am perfectly capable of going the wrong direction on even a familiar freeway for miles and miles without noticing a problem, so it’s just safer to have Siri direct me.  Siri says, “Make a U-turn on Depot Street.” OK.  Then “In 2.6 miles turn right on Leisure Valley.”  And I’m all “But Siri, there’s the freeway right there.  Why are we going away from it?”  Siri didn’t respond to my question, so I just kept following his directions.  As we drove further and further in the “wrong” direction I kept asking Siri what on earth he was doing - he never did answer me! - but I kept following his directions. I did notice that the distance to home was getting smaller - as were the roads I was traveling in between crops and cattle and windmills - so I kept following his directions.  I had no idea where I was or even what direction I was traveling in, but hey, it was a pretty nice ride through the countryside.  I crossed 3 drawbridges over pretty rivers.  Nice.  Eventually I ended up on I5 South, found my way to 99S in Stockton, and came home.    

We first heard of Abram just a few verses earlier, at the end of the list of Noah’s descendants. All we really learn is that his father Terah was 70 when Abram was born, Abram was married to Sarai, and that Terah’s family had moved from Ur to Haran, including Abram, Sarai, and Lot.  On today’s maps that is like moving from just north of the Persian Gulf in Iraq, up along the Euphrates River through Syria to just barely over the Turkish border.   We are going to assume that his family still knew of the God who sent Noah out in the ark - the flood had only been 350 years or so earlier.  Of course, the whole Tower of Babel confusion of languages thing happened in between Noah’s story and Abram’s, and if we learn nothing else from the Old Testament it is that people are really good at forgetting about God . . but we are going to assume Abram knew about this particular God, because if we believe that these patriarchs really did live for centuries, then Abram was a toddler when Noah died, and Noah’s son Shem, who had been on the Ark, lived until Abram was about 150.  Abram would most likely have known Shem, and the stories about God’s relationship with their family.  So he would have, should have known about the power of this God who spoke to him.

So God, this particular God . . . the one we know today as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Moses, the one who had saved Abram’s ancestors from the flood . . . that God, came to Abram and told him to pick up his entire life and move to who knew where.  The rewards set out were pretty attractive.    . . . . “You will be a great nation and your name will be respected, I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.”  And did you notice that there were no threats at all - no “be obedient or I will smite thee!”  God expected that Abram would obey, and he did so, without question.  So in verse 5 “Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all of their possessions, and those who became members of their household in Haran; and they set out for the land of Canaan.”  I realize that the reading today only went to verse 4, but verse 5 is important, because it tells us that , unlike Moses hundreds of years later, Abram knew where he was heading.  He was heading to the very place his father had been heading toward when he left Ur, but never got that far. Instead he stopped and settled in Haran.   But God’s plans for this family included the land.   So God came to Abram and said, “Pack up all your stuff and leave your comfortable life.  Leave your parents and all your other relatives.  I have something better in mind for you. Just do what I tell you and I will bless you in ways you cannot imagine.”  

Abram would have many adventures in the 100 years between leaving Haran and his death.  You can read about those adventures in Genesis.  He did some really smart things, and some not so smart things, but the one thing he always did, the one thing that Abram is best known for, is following directions. Obedience.  Beginning here, with this instruction to leave his family and all the familiar things, and go to a new place, from this time forward whenever God says, “Do this thing”, Abram does it.   Some of the things God insisted upon were incredibly difficult - but Abram trusted that if he did what God told him to do, all would be well. Leave home.  OK.  Change your name.  OK.  Sacrifice your child.  OK.  Wait, what?  Beginning here, with leaving home, Abram would prove over and over again that he was willing to follow God’s directions even when he was asked to do the unimaginable.  And yes, Abraham’s descendants became a great nation, and his name is still respected some 4,000 years later!  Three major world religions revere his name.   God’s promises to him have been fulfilled. 

Abram apparently knew exactly when God was talking to him.  I don’t know if he heard a voice in his head, or what.  The Bible doesn’t tell us how he recognized God’s voice.  But he knew God’s voice.  He could hear God’s instructions and follow them.  It’s often more difficult for us to figure out when God is talking to us.  Sometimes God speaks through our conscience. If you feel like something might be a little hinky, chances are good that it is and you shouldn’t do it.  Sometimes God speaks to us through other people, as when people recognize gifts that we don’t see in ourselves.  Sometimes there is a sign, or a series of signs. It usually takes me a while to hear it. I often have to be hit upside the head with a God by four.  And sometimes we do hear a voice that we know is God’s.   When I was one of the chaplain interns at the Indiana State Psychiatric Hospital the head Psychiatrist was mentioning various diagnoses and said, “if they think God is telling them to do things, they are schizophrenic.”  The five of us students looked each other and Hal said, “Uh, most of us in this room believe God has spoken to us.”  The doctor said, “And I believe he did.  The way to tell the difference is this - if the voice is telling you to do good things, it is God. If it is telling you to hurt people, you need medication.”  However God’s instructions come to us, it is important to follow directions.   

Just as I depend on Siri to keep me from getting lost between one place and another, so we should all depend upon God to guide us on our way.  We may not recognize we are being led or why we are being led that way, but the Good News is that if we let God lead us, if we follow God’s directions, we cannot go wrong.  We will always end up exactly where we need to be.  For we are God’s people, the adopted descendants of Abram, and we know that the promise God made to him, that “all the families of the earth will be blessed because of him" continue to be fulfilled among us.