IN TENTS’ LIVING

Genesis 12: 1-9

Hebrews 11: 8-16

      Kimberly was angry.   She slammed down the phone and just stood there trembling.   This was it!   The end!   No more moves!   Eight moves in 11 years was too much.   Promotions, advancements did not matter any longer.   She had sacrificed herself and her kids’ lives too long for her husband.  It was time she stood up for herself.

      When Jack came home, he walked in with concern.  But he had not expected Kimberly’s determination or resolve.   He admitted that he was tired of moving too.   So Jack turned down the promotion.   He and Kimberly decided to be nomads no longer.   Some people even today know what it’s like to be wanderers, to be constantly changing, moving.   I know someone who moved 13 times in 18 years growing up and attended four different high schools in four years—in states as different as North Carolina, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Washington.

     An antique dealer, passing through a small village, stopped to watch an old man chopping wood with a very old ax.

     “That’s a mighty old ax you have there,” remarked the collector.

     “Why, yes it is,” said the villager.   “It once belonged to George Washington.”

      “Is that a fact!” exclaimed the antique dealer with great interest.   “It certainly has done well to last this long.”

      “Yes,” admitted the old man.   “Of course, it’s had three new handles and two new heads.”

     My Grandpa Smith lived until he was 96.   Driving back and forth across the United States from Washington to Princeton, New Jersey each year of the 3 years I was in seminary, I would stop at Grandpa’s farm in Iowa and stay with him 3 or 4 days.   It was fascinating to hear him talk about his years as a medic around the time of the Spanish-American War and homesteading in a log cabin in Montana.   That guy had seen change—from horse and buggy to Model A to Studebaker to United Air Lines to the Space Shuttle—all within one lifetime.   And Grandpa adjusted pretty well to the change.

     But there are people who fear any kind of change.   They want things to always be the same.   Change means stepping into the unknown and that makes them uncomfortable.   Permanence and the status quo are the symbols of their security.   Change means risking a different kind of future and why take a chance, they say.   When they eat in a restaurant, they always order the same thing—because to risk trying something new might bring disappointment.   The future just might be worse than the past, so pessimism is a form of protection and guards us from change.

      But change is not a choice--- it’s a given.   We live in a world of change.   And change is not automatically bad--- or good.   For with change is the opportunity for growth, learning, maturity.   As people of faith, we don’t have to sit around and complain and pessimistically hide from a world constantly changing.

       Let me tell you a story of a man and a woman who were called upon to live all their lives in a changing world.   In a couple weeks I’m going to Colorado to live in a tent near a lake nestled up against the Continental Divide.    But I’m only going to be living in that tent about a week.  But this woman and man I’m going to tell you about lived in tents all the time.     They learned to trust.   Their names were Sarah and Abraham.

      God called Abraham and Sarah to leave their parents’ homes with their nephew Lot, to abandon the familiar, to go out to a place they did not know.   There were great dangers involved—finding food and water, avoiding enemies.   The risks were real.   They became people on the move---- geographically, psychologically, spiritually.

       They sometimes got into trouble as they traveled.   They often failed and strayed, but they returned and started their journey again—destined to be wanderers with God.   We remember what Sarah and Abraham became, the ancestors of a people who would carry God’s word to the world.

       The first verse of the 11^th chapter of Hebrews tells us that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.   Faith is believing that when you drive around a corner, the road will still be there.   Faith is not hiding inside the security of building, tradition, or familiar form.   Faith is a journey.   It is active.   It is moving, stretching, risking.   For Abraham and Sarah, following God was risky business.   It meant living in tents, not forts.

      The story of Hebrews is not only the story of a couple who lived long ago or a people who lived long ago.   It’s my story—and it’s your story.   It is the story of faith.

      Like Abraham and Sarah, we are called to move out into a threatening, evolving, changing, beautiful, ugly, scary, friendly, good, bad world.   For Kimberly and Jack it was too much to move again.   Should they have folded the tent and moved one more time?   Was that the response of faith?   Or is saying “no” to a world which sometimes pushes us around the way to really exercise faith?    Sometimes faith says to stay put or to say “no.”    Only the individual can answer that.

       Dan was never a good student.   He made C’s and wished he could bring home A’s and B’s like his sister.   He did not talk about it.    He struggled on and felt threatened when called on in class.  

     When I was growing up there was no such thing as preschool.    You stayed home until you were 5 and then you went to half-day kindergarten.    So your first day of kindergarten, your first day of school, was a big, big deal.  It was a traumatic event for a number of little 5-year-old children who had never been away from home before without Mom or Dad.   Both my parents worked, so I was used to a babysitter and wasn’t that afraid of being left at school the first day.   But a number of the other children were petrified.   They cried and whimpered when left in the classroom that first day.  

        I’m probably one of only a handful for people in this entire country who can say that my kindergarten teacher was fired the first day of class.   I will never forget it as long as I live.   She was majorly grumpy and yelled at us all morning--- kids that were already afraid of school.   The crowning moment came when we were lined up at the door to leave the classroom and go home at the end of the morning.    Our teacher grabbed all the papers we had colored on for an activity earlier and she screamed,  “You kids don’t know anything!   You don’t even know how to draw!”   Then she tore up our pictures and threw them in the garbage can right next to Ron Schmidt’s trembling leg.   I will never forget that day!

      Back to my story of Dan.   Dan remembered a day in his early school life as well.   It was the day his first-grade teacher told him he was a poor student and would never amount to anything.   Those words haunted him for years.   Then in June his report card came--- 3 D’s.  He thought that perhaps buying some 3-D glasses would help.   Seriously, he thought about running away.   He knew his parents would not be pleased and he would have to endure more comparisons to his smart sister.   But a retired neighbor volunteered to give Dan some help that summer with his writing and his math.   His confidence began to grow.   He learned from his neighbor that he could trust his mind.   His abilities were as good as anyone’s.   When Dan graduated, he was almost a straight A student.   He finally believed in himself.

      Being a person of faith is not just a matter of getting a positive attitude or trying harder.   It’s searching and discerning the will of God—and knowing that you can believe in yourself because God believes in you.   It’s hearing the call like Sarah and Abraham.   It’s learning to remember and reaffirm the call when we get off course.   It means living in tents rather than stone forts in order to follow God.   It means trusting in God, because God is trustworthy even when humans fail us or materials fall apart.   It’s a matter of risking and being vulnerable in order to reach the promised land.   And there will be wounds and scars from such a difficult journey, but there will be growth and blessing and integrity—a sense of having done the will of God, a sense of having gone on a journey with God in the lead.

      We can trust God because God created us in love.   And we know God’s intentions for us are good and right.   We can trust God because we can be certain that God will fulfill the promise.   God is worthy of our trust, faithful in every way.   We can trust God because God promises to be with us.   After Abraham and Sarah, Moses had said to Joshua,   “It is the Lord who goes before you.   God will be with you, not failing you or forsaking you.   Do not fear or be dismayed.”    And Jesus gave us this promise:   “I am with you always, even to the close of the age.”

      Trusting in God is the most important thing you will ever do!   It is not a weak act, nor something to do as a last resort.   In his book,  “Who Trusts in God?,” Albert Outler put it this way:   “Faith is not a falling back to God when all else has failed.   It is accepting our lives from God’s hand.   It is having and enjoying human life as the beloved children of God.”

       Sarah and Abraham trusted God.   They heard God’s call and left Haran.   They survived a famine in Egypt.   They overcame the threats of Sodom and Gomorrah.   They learned to give back to God from the blessings of the land.   They believed God and became parents when they were too old.   They believed that God could make a difference in their lives.   Are you a part of Abraham and Sarah’s family, the family of faith?   Do you believe and live as if God can make a difference in your life?   Are you ready for in tents’ living?

     I close with a few verses from Romans about faith:   “I have complete confidence in the gospel.  It is God’s power to save all who believe… For the gospel reveals how God puts people right with himself—it is through faith alone, from beginning to end.   As the scripture says,  ‘The person who is put right with God through faith shall live.’”    And we want to live, don’t we!

                                                                           AMEN