Sermon
of June 5, 2005
Presented by Rev. Chuck Ericson
Scripture lesson: Genesis 12:1-9
“What's Your Motivation?”
I have good news for all of you, especially those who are guests today and who aren’t sure what’s going to happen. I know when it’s confirmation and communion, I have to speak shorter, so I’m prepared for that, I promise!
What we’ve just read is a record of an event that Biblical scholars date around 3700 to 4000 years ago. It’s amazing to think that stories of peoples’ faith and call from God from that long ago continue to stay with us. And the real wonder of it all is that stories that are that old have a way of reaching into our lives and into our hearts and inspiring us and guiding us to this day. So I want to take a few moments to look at this amazing story about the call of Abram and Sarai who later become known as Abraham and Sarah and what their story teaches us about our motivation of our faith.
I thought of the confirmation class especially when I prepared for today because today you made a promise – you made several promises – that really have to do with saying that you are going to claim your faith and follow the Christian way as best as you can, not perfectly all the time, but as best you can in the years ahead. And so you answered God’s call in the same way that Abram and Sarai answered a call from God, as well, and as they went on a journey in a way you are going on a journey not from one place to another but a journey of your spirit throughout the rest of your life. So I want to think about for a few moments what motivated Abram and Sarai as they left from their place of home called Haran and went to the promised land of Canaan.
Now there are three possible sources of their motivation that I thought of as I read through this.
One is that they might have thought that if they did what God said, a lot of good things would happen to them, for God said, on the previous page, “And I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and I will make your name great.” God is saying to Abram and Sarai and their families, “If you do what I tell you, if you go from Haran to Canaan, you will be blessed, you will become great your name will be blessed and known among all the peoples.” That’s some motivation, thinking if you do what God says you will get power, you’ll become popular, you’ll have prestige—that’s some good motivation, isn’t it? You’ll become like P. Diddy or Donald Trump or Oprah. You’ll have all the power, everything you want, people will bow to your every need people will know you and admire you—that’s pretty good motivation. I wonder if that’s really what motivated Abram and Sarai as they left from Haran to Canaan, thinking that they were going to get all this power and prestige and popularity. That’s one possibility.
A second possibility is they were motivated by the idea that God was going to put the smack down on all their enemies. (I’m talking the young people talk now, right? Is that good?) God says, “I will bless those who bless you and him who curses you I will curse.” Wow, that’s like saying if people give you problems, I’ll take care of it. I wonder if that was Abram and Sarai’s motivation as they left? That if people gave them a hard time, if people got in their way, if people were mean to them and tried to hurt them, that God would intervene and God would seek vengeance upon those who sought to curse them, their enemies. Would that be a good reason for you to be motivated in your faith today, if you got confirmed today, to think that God’s going to get all the bad people who get after you, the kids who annoy you in school, the teachers who you think are giving you problems but really love you, family members, relatives, annoying neighbors and so forth, do you think it would be a good motivation to be a Christian and follow the way of God because God will take care of them and get rid of them and get them out of your life for you? If they curse you, God will curse them? Vengeance?
There’s one more motivation, and that is that Abram and Sarai followed God just because they knew somewhere deep down inside that that was going to be the best thing to do for them, that they could trust that if they followed God, things were going to go well for them. Again, not perfectly, but well. Now I think that the answer is that that’s why Abram and Sarai really went from Haran to Canaan, because they just knew it was right. It wasn’t because there was this expectation of blessings and all good things at the end, it wasn’t because they thought God would take care of all their enemies—it was because they just knew it was right. You know why? One of the things was because it said Abram was 75 years old. I’m 52 and a lot of that stuff doesn’t matter to me anymore—power, prestige, popularity—not that I ever had any of it anyway, but it means searching after it or wishing I had it is less and less important to me as I get older. I imagine when he got to 75 it probably didn’t matter all that much to Abram whether he was going to become a great name and a great nation and people would bless him. And when you’re 75 you probably don’t worry about your enemies much anymore and in fact it doesn’t say that Abram had any. He probably was going to get some when he moved into Canaan where there were already people there but, I don’t think that was the reason. I think that there was something deep inside the heart of Sarai and Abram that just said, “This is right. If we follow God, we will find peace. We will find fulfillment in our lives. Life will be good.”
And so for you who are being confirmed today, the good news is that if you follow this simple example of Abram and Sarai, I believe you will be blessed and your life will be good. And I say this to everybody who’s here because the rest of us are not confirmed today but every morning we wake up and in a way there’s a chance to confirm your faith. To wake up and say, “I’m going to continue this day walking the way that God has shown me answering God’s call and being faithful to the way of Christ.” And it’s not just about what we’re going to get now. It’s what we’re going to get hopefully sometime way off in the future. What I find most when I talk to people who either are 75 or older, or people who are maybe facing death, is that what matters to them is not whether they became popular, not whether they became powerful, not whether they had a great name among all the people or whether God took care of all their enemies. What matters when they look back upon the length of their days is, can I follow God? Even though I made some mistakes along the way, did I try to follow God? Did I try to live my life as Christ would have me live my life? That’s what matters most to people when it all comes down to it, is whether they simply followed the call of God and were faithful to that.
So, to the eight of you who are being confirmed today, let that be your guide each day, and to all of the rest of you, too. And some day, way, way far away, hopefully a long time from now, you will look back with great peace and satisfaction upon your life, that you may have been blessed by God, that God might have taken care of a few people who were problems to you, but that ultimately you followed God’s way, and that will, I promise you, bring you peace.