Scripture: Genesis 12:1–9
Friends, we are a people of words — sometimes what we are reading matches the world around us, and sometimes the books, and articles, and scripture transport us to another time and another place.
There is a book that I’ve been reading this past week that feels very connected to our times called The Art of Gathering. It’s a book about the magic of gathering people — about how we meet and why it matters. It looks at when people come together in business meetings, weddings, conferences, dinner parties, family reunions, board meetings, funerals, schools, rallies, and churches — and asks questions about how these events serve purposes when people gather well.
The book has gained a reputation for its role in the mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani in New York City last year. Mamdani went from only 2% name recognition at the start of his campaign, to almost total name recognition on election day when he won the race — due in part to the way his campaign gathered people. Several of his campaign members read The Art of Gathering, and posed the question: Was is possible to infuse more joy and meaning into politics through the way that the campaign gathered people together?
This Art of Gathering has been my companion text this week as I’ve journeyed through today’s scripture reading from Genesis with God calling Abram (or Abraham) and his family into a new covenant . . . if they are willing to leave home and go to the new place that God will re-gather them.
In this scripture reading, Abraham and Sarah are people of relative obscurity. They live in a place called Harran that is not where they are from and it is not where they are going. It’s an in-between place. The two of them seem stuck in one of life’s in-betweens: in-between homes, in-between the losses of loved ones, in-between having a clear sense of meaning and direction — perhaps waiting for a sense of purpose that is slow in coming for them.
Into this in-between-ness, comes God choosing them especially to be a blessing to the world if they will go with God into the future. God is proposing a new kind of gathering, a covenant between God and Abraham and Sarah through which their family will be a blessing to the world. Here’s the funny thing about this covenant — it is exclusive and expansive at the same time. The covenant promise is made between God and the descendants of Sarah and Abraham, but it’s for the benefit of all people.
And so Abraham leaves home as the Lord had told him. Abraham says yes to God’s invitation — and they go into Canaan (which is where they were originally headed before they got stuck in between).
One of the observations of The Art of Gathering is that is sometimes we focus a lot on the logistics of an event, like the food, or the table arrangements, or the technology required, and don’t talk about the purpose of why we gather to begin with.
For example, weddings often follow very strict patterns; sporting events start with a national anthem; staff meeting include people giving status updates on projects. It’s often just the way things are. But if you focus on purpose of an event, the decisions about how to host it become clear. The wedding format works helps offer guests certain familiar cues, the national anthem reminds us of something that unites us in the midst of competition, and the staff meeting can help build rapport among colleagues, even if it’s accomplished through a shared disdain for staff meetings. The purpose of a gathering matters.
Contrast last week’s reading about Noah’s ark with this week’s reading of God calling Abraham to leave home: the flood narrative is all about preparation — how to build a very specific boat, how to get all the animals onto the boat. The purpose of the story is found at the end, when God finds a new way to relate to humanity.
For Abraham, the purpose of this story is clear at the beginning, and there is no preparation required. If you go, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. Having a clear purpose makes taking risks and doing hard things possible. That’s true for Abraham and true for all of us too.
Abraham accepts God’s invitation because there is a clear purpose behind the option to leave home — you can stay where you are and go through what is expected of you, or you can take a leap of faith, and if you do it all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
And when Abraham arrives to the place where God has called him in verse seven, his arriving is not the end, but it is the beginning. He is traveling through the places where he is being called, and seeing what possibilities are there . . . he’s learning, changing, growing, but taking all of his past selves and experiences with him too.
Today as we bless new members of Newman Church, we take comfort in the Salem Covenant which is something of our purpose as a church . . . we are connected to each other and God through faith, traveling like Abraham and Sarah through this life, responding together to what God reveals in our midst. It’s a good purpose statement, and important, because like Abraham … we can’t know exactly where God is leading us, and where we are going … we just know that our purpose is to find ways to do it together, and be sources of Christ’s love and justice to a world in need of both.
To join a covenant with God is to take a leap of faith, knowing that God will make of us a blessing to the world in ways that we might not yet know. God is making something new possible through us, together. It’s as simple and as exciting as that.
How will you be a blessing to the world? How will we be a blessing?
When Abram arrives in the place that God is calling him, be builds two altars to God. This church is one of our altars . . . it may look finished on a day to day basis, but the work of building it is always ongoing.
Each good gathering led by our covenant helps build this church.
Our second altar is all the work we do when we go out from this place to serve.
Friends, God takes those who are stuck, those who can’t find the Good Word, those who have ceased to hope, and turns them into a community with a future.
For those who have been fixed in place, God now calls them into pilgrimage.
The call is not a demand, or a punishment, but rather a promise.
In this story, only a departure from security is the way out of death and abandonment.
To live in purposeful risk is to have hope, for Abraham. May we gather in the light of this love, today and always — Amen.
