Proper 5, Year A, Track 1
Genesis 12:1-9
Psalm 33:1-12
Romans 4:13-25
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
"Some years ago when I was still in the Army and stationed in Italy, some friends of mine in another company of soldiers went into the mountains to do a land navigation exercise. This location was fairly remote, deep in the Italian Alps, and it was frequently used as a land navigation course by our unit because it was a difficult test of our skills. During these exercises, soldiers are given a compass, a protractor, a military map of the area, and the coordinates of markers they had to reach in a particular order. At each location, there would be a flag or some other clear marker at each point. On this particular occasion, however, the planners of this outing failed to consider two important factors. First, these were military intelligence soldiers, not infantrymen, and were thus much more familiar with navigating a PowerPoint slide rather than the great outdoors. Second, this land nav exercise was scheduled for March, and it had been a very snowy winter.
You can probably imagine where this is going. Several feet of snow on the ground obscured almost all the markers that had been placed for the course except, naturally, the very first one. After well over an hour of soldiers getting lost trying to find the second marker, the exercise was canceled, and the cold, wet squad went home.
Have you ever been in a situation like that? Perhaps you’ve found yourself driving in a remote area, following a map app, only to realize that it seems to be taking you in circles. Perhaps you’ve found yourself trying to build a piece of furniture with “some assembly required,” and you’ve misplaced the instructions. What do you do? Do you use your best instinct to get from point A to point B, or do you give up on the endeavor?
Our world is built around waypoints and benchmarks, some highly specific, others frustratingly vague. In our spiritual life, however, it can be hard to measure progress. We have the “instruction manual,” so to speak, in the form of the Scriptures, but oftentimes it’s easy to miss the waypoints.
In today’s reading from Genesis, the story of Abram is just beginning, but it certainly doesn’t seem that way. Abram seems to be a man who has missed the waypoints in his life. He seems to have spent most of his life to this point wandering without any particular direction, intending first to leave Ur for Canaan, but instead finding himself in Harran, which, ironically, can be translated from the Hebrew as “crossroads.” Childless old Abram and his barren wife Sarai were quite literally stuck at the crossroads when God gives them an unexpected direction: “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Now I’m not sure about you, but I would certainly have some follow-up questions. Where is this land? How will I become a great nation when I cannot produce one child? What awaits me when I get there, and how will I know when I have arrived?
But Abram asks none of these questions. He went as the Lord had told him. Nearly 500 miles he traveled from Harran to Shechem (he didn’t have Google Maps to tell him the distance, but I do). In Exodus, when the Lord leads Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt and through the desert, he guides them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Talk about a waypoint! But we have no indication that there was any kind of similar supernatural manifestation guiding Abram and his household. They simply walked until God appeared to Abram and told him, “To your offspring I will give this land.” Abram at this point still had no inkling as to how he would have offspring, but again he responds to the Lord not with questions, but with action.
We see a similar situation in today’s Gospel account from Matthew. Jesus sees a tax collector sitting in his booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. He did not ask why, where, or how long. A few chapters earlier in Matthew 4, Jesus sees Simon Peter and Andrew fishing along the Sea of Galilee and says, “’Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” The response is action. In the next verses in chapter 4, Jesus sees James and John and calls them also. “Immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him.” It’s admirable to see those examples of faith, so boldly responding to God’s call, but it’s also daunting, and sometimes it can be discouraging.
I for one need waypoints. I need the signs that I’m going where God wants me to, and I need the capacity to recognize those signs, and I’m not alone in this. For every Abram and Sarai decisively executing God’s instruction, there is a Jonah decisively fleeing it. For every unquestioning Matthew, there is a reticent Moses, needing encouragement that he, yes he, is the one called to extraordinary things. And even among those who, like Peter, immediately gave up everything to follow Jesus, there are still moments of doubt and denial. Is this really what God intended?
But God does not punish us for questions, for fears, or for doubts. When we need a waypoint, God gives us a waypoint. Perhaps that’s why Moses and the Israelites had such a visible supernatural presence guiding their journey, while Abram and Sarai did not. They simply needed the encouragement, the comfort of knowing that they were following God’s will. God does not punish us for trying to do what we are asked to do, and we should not punish those who may have a more difficult journey to faith in Jesus Christ; for Christ tells us that “if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” In his first letter to the church at Thessalonica, Paul encourages them to uplift all those among them seeking Christ, especially those struggling: “Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing…And we urge you, brothers and sisters, to admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil with evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.” So to everyone here, those whose faith has been easier and those who have needed to dig some waypoints out of the snow, I ask this of you: always make yourself aware of and present for those who come to you spiritually vulnerable. Demonstrate compassion and patience and all that you do, that those acts will be an invitation to others to come to you with need. And remember that your interactions with those whose faith is fledgling may be your own waypoints on your journey of closeness to God. Amen."