February 17, 2008 Sermon

"Living by Faith"

Rev. Dale G. Bauer

Text: Genesis 12:1-4a

Abraham takes my breath away. He’s called the father of our faith. He is genetically the father of the Jews. And spiritually our father in faith. What takes my breath away is that he became the father of our faith by pulling up stakes and heading into an unknown future to an unknown place when he was 75 years old.

A guy called Abram (he’s not Abraham yet. Abram is kind of like “big daddy.”). Abram’s family is from the Tigers/Euphrates basin in Mesopotamia, a place we know today as Iraq. He heads north with his family and reaches Haran, along today’s Syrian-Iraqi border, where he settles and does well. God gets Abram’s attention one day and tells him to move, pull up stakes, and head to a land he’s never seen, with a bizarre promise or image of the future: he will be the father of a great nation. (Remember Abram hasn’t been able to have children.)

And Abram does it. By faith. To a land and future he does not know, by faith. That takes my breath away. Why, when I moved from Akron, Ohio, to Denver, Colorado, I needed to know I had a job, healthcare insurance, and a place to live. But Abram had none of these. Off he went. Takes my breath away.

Story goes on. When he gets to the Promised Land, there’s a famine. He goes to Egypt, and then back to the Promised Land. But he has no children. Finally at 100—he’s been waiting 25 years—he has a kid, Isaac. He gets his new name, Abraham, meaning “father of a multitude. This is the beginning of the Jewish nation, Israel. And then God asks Abraham to sacrifice—as in kill—his son.

Abraham’s willingness to listen to God, to live by promises unseen, takes my breath away. But remember what Pastor Nico said in her sermon a few weeks ago: God takes us places we never expect to go.

I believe that. I never expected to spend over 30 years as a pastor. I really wanted to be a Ph.D. in geography teaching at a university. I never expected my first call as a pastor would be in the mountains of Colorado. My second in urban Denver. And my third in suburban Albuquerque, New Mexico.

But God does that. And I believe God is calling this congregation to imagine a new future. A place we have not been before. From prayers and conversation, our Congregation Council has been listening to God. And has been mapping out a future for us. To be taken by faith. Part of it is building, now. Part of it is reshaping our vision.

First, what is the vision of Cross of Hope?

That everyone on the West Mesa knows and experiences Jesus Christ.

It is getting close to a decade that this vision has been our future. It is based on Jesus’ great commission to go to all nations and make disciples of them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28).

So our vision has been based on Jesus’ claim for universal discipleship; but we have limited it to the West Mesa, even though this congregation serves people in the north and south valleys of Albuquerque, and both sides of the Rio Grande.

So here’s a more universal vision:

That everyone knows and experiences Jesus Christ.

And what is the purpose of this congregation? Can you tell me? What is the shape of our ministry? Here it is:

Love God (worship)
Love Others (service)
Lead People to God (evangelism)
Learn to be More Like Christ (discipleship)
Live with Hope (fellowship)
The alliteration, all those l’s, is nice. But hard to remember, yes?

In the small catechism written by Martin Luther is a description of the work of the Holy Spirit in establishing the Church. As with all of Luther’s writing, the foundation is Scripture. He says the Spirit

calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it united with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.

The purpose of the Church then through the Holy Spirit is to

Call (share good news)
Gather (worship)
Enlighten (educate)
Sanctify (disciple)
Keep (koinonia)
Calling is proclaiming good news that the kingdom of God comes in Christ Jesus, who suffered, died, and was raised from the dead. To gather is what we do every Sunday, gather for worship, to praise God. To enlighten is to educate, Bible study in a word. Sanctify means growth in holiness, to be transformed by Christ. And then to keep us in the faith is to live in a community, called the Church. If Christianity was a solo, one-person operation, why did Jesus establish a church, a gathering?

So far, so good. But how do we accomplish these things in 2008, 2009, 2010 and beyond? That’s where goals come in, something we have not done with our vision and purposes before. I mentioned last week that we can make goals to be a millennial congregation. “Mille” is Latin and it means 1,000. The idea is that to live our vision and purpose, we need to have 1,000 people here from Sunday to Sunday. It looks like this:

500 in worship
200 in Christian education
175 in Preschool and elementary school
125 in outreach and fellowship
These goals are the way we can live out our vision and our purpose. These numbers stretch each one of us to also call, gather, enlighten, sanctify, and keep.

I realize this is a lot of information. And a lot of stretching for us to do as a congregation. But this is what God calls us to do. He called Abraham to pull up stakes, move to a new land, and even sacrifice his own son. In a word, to live by faith. To go places we have not been before.

On Thursday, I was reading the Lent devotional booklet. Maria G., 8th grader and confirmation student, wrote a devotion entitled, “Trusting God.” It was based on the same Bible passage from Genesis, chapter 12, that this sermon is based on: Here are her words:

Abram trusts God and knows this promise is true and leaves his life in Haran behind to start a new life in a new and unknown place. Today, if someone offered you such a thing, you would probably think it was a scam, an attempt to cheat you out of hard-earned money. If you heard a voice tell you this today, you would probably be considered crazy. But Abram knew this was God and trusted Him to give him his own nation. Hopefully, we would be able to recognize and trust God as much as Abram does.

Then she ends with this prayer:

Dear Lord, please help us trust in you just as Abram did so that you might also lead us to great things. Amen.

Amen.