Sermon for June 7, 2026: Stages based upon Genesis 12:1-9

Genesis 12:1-9 The Call of Abram (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)
 
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I 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.”
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram 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, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak[b] of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From 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 Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.

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     ​As you all know, I rock climb. I’ve never been much of an athlete, unlike the other women in my family. After a lifetime of being surrounded by joggers, cyclists, and softball and soccer players, it is interesting to be the one explaining the intricacies of a sport that is unlike anything they play and one I am still learning. I tell them about my weird tight shoes that I have to wear and learning how to tie some very important knots. There’s all of these names for different shape holds: Crimps, slopers, jugs, pinches, and pockets. And, there is a process for figuring out a climb. Sometimes you can climb the whole route the first time you try. More often though, you have to figure things out in stages.

     Sometimes it’s hard to even start a climb. There was a climb at Colby this spring that I worked on in multiple days, and I couldn’t even do the first move! Sometimes, you can get part way and get stuck. Your belayer can hold you in the air, hanging on the wall, while you rest and try to figure out how to finish. I had that happen this spring, too. There was a hold I just couldn’t figure out how to reach. Different belayers helped me troubleshoot it and helped hold me up while I rested to keep working on it. I finally got the move on my last climb of the semester before they closed the wall for the summer. I never figured out how to do the one I couldn’t start. But, I got as far as I wanted on the one that I had to work on in stages.

     Today’s scripture reading is about a family that travels in stages not up a wall, but from their home country to the place that God will show them. Abram and Sarai, who will become the patriarch and matriarch of an entire nation, start off as regular people who are called. In a commentary on this text, Cheryl Lindsay notes that one way we can read scripture is by attending to the journey contained within, particularly these early books that are describing to us how a people understand their history. Last week, I preached about the beginning, the first move, where God delighted in creation, built relationships, and enjoyed rest. A fair amount happens in the intervening chapters between one and twelve. Lindsay describes the shift as going from the cosmic narrative of creation to the formation of a nation through the story of one family.  In our reading, we are at the beginning stage of the nation, which is the beginning of Abram and Sarai’s journey.

     Song Bok Jon points out in his commentary on this text that this journey is the beginning of a spiritual renewal through reorientation towards God. It is also a story about immigration. God calls Abram and Sarai to leave Abram’s home nation, giving up “prosperity, social status, and friends” for something new that God promises. God doesn’t even initially name the place, just promises to show them and promises that their family will become a new nation for them. The promise of a new home filled with prosperity is likely familiar to many a contemporary immigrant and descendant of immigrants. Most of our ancestors didn’t have quite the same calling as Abram and Sarai. But, they certainly created a nation, a nation still being shaped by immigration today.

     Abram and Sarai also invited Abram’s nephew Lot. The scripture says that they left when Abram was seventy-five years old. It turns out that this nation-building was not a whippersnapper's job! They also took the people they had enslaved. The fact that he owned humans is but our first clue that Abram will be an imperfect progenitor. He will frequently try to do what God says while also being a deeply fallible figure. And, the land he will go to, like the land our ancestor came to, was an inhabited land. The place is called Canaan and the people Canaanites. They will become known as enemies. They began simply as people living in their homeland. This, too, is a reminder that, as Dr. Lindsay notes, not every stage in a process leads to a desired end. This move might have been a good one for Abram. Was it a good one for the Canaanites?

     In notes on Genesis, David Carr points out that the next stage in the story, Abram and Sarai’s travels through Shechem with its oak tree and Bethel will be repeated later and with more details by Jacob. It is here in these places, with sacred oaks and sacred hills that God appears to him. Abram builds an altar to mark that something holy had happened there. For generations, this stage of the journey will be remembered, and their eventual descendants will return to these two holy places. Their descendants will remember the promises and carry it forward within them. They will make use of these altars as a place for rest and worship. What a gift it is to leave a sanctuary for those who will come later. How might we take care to make sure that the place we’re journeying through continues to welcome the ones who follow?

     Today’s reading has had a challenging place in the history of colonization. European Christians, understanding themselves to be children of Abraham through faith, latched onto it as justification for displacing native people throughout the world. It is also a text that grounds the conflicts between the modern nation of Israel and Palestinians. In his commentary, Song Bok Jon alludes to the work of Walter Brueggeman, who said that he does not read in this text an order for Abram to be in conflict with the Canaanites. He argues that the directive, at least initially, was to live in harmony. Certainly this kind of peaceful co-existence as neighbors could be seen as a sign of the fulfilment of God’s promise.

      I’d encourage us to think of this text like that tricky hold I had part-way up the wall. If we grab hold of it wrong, we fall, unable to finish the route ahead of us. But, if we make use of the people who are helping us, we can figure out a way forward that allows us to complete this stage of the journey safely and with great joy. We might have to hang out at one of the altars for a bit to figure out our next steps. That’s OK though, because we can hold each other up. As Dr. Lindsay says in her commentary on this text, “The blessings of covenantal community elevates us all who journeyed on by stages and by faith.” May we continue to support each other on the routes God has set before us. Remember that God promises to bless the world through Abram and Sarai, not just one people. Let us pass that blessing on to those who need it.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Song Bok Jon, Proper 5, Preaching God's Transforming Justice: A Lectionary Commentary, Year A Featuring 22 New Holy Days for Justice
Cheryl Lindsay: https://www.ucc.org/sermon-seeds/sermon-seeds-journeyed-on-by-stages/
David Carr's notes on Genesis in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: The New Revised Standard Version with Apocryphya, ed. Michael Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)