God, you are the one who calls us into situations that feel terrifying and hard, or just more difficult than what ends up happening. And it is our trust in your spirit's work that helps us navigate those situations. So may your spirit guide us in this time together and lead us to better be your love this world. Amen. So I gave a nod to last week. 

Last week we were at the end of Noah and the Flood. And since then Noah has the interesting fallout with his kids. A lot of nudity involved, It's a little weird. And then the Tower of Babel and then an introduction to Abram's family lineage as like descendants from Noah, because at least according to the way that the authors have told the story of Noah, everyone's a descendant of Noah in some capacity. 

So Abram's brother at this point, who is the father of Lot and Abram's father, have both died. Abram and his wife Sarai cannot have children of their own. And it's just the two of them and their nephew Lot and the household that they had built. Different translations will say what else was there. Sometimes it's like the people that have become a part of their household and then it's the life that they have built. 

The Hebrew's not super clear, but the reality is that they have established a liveliness that now they have to pick up and take with them as they follow this command to go. And the other interesting part of the text is they're doing all of this when Abram is the nice young age of 75. So we also notice in this text that if just last week God had a covenant with all of creation and all of humankind, now God is thinking a little differently. 

God's already blessed the ones who descended from Noah and scattered them to be the diverse people and the diverse beauty of God's creation. And now God is choosing to be in relationship with one particular family. God comes close to Abram and Abram comes close to God. And as you probably already know, noticed because every time that Connor read Abram in the text today, he auto completed it with Abraham, 

because eventually he does get that name. So that's the name that we typically know him by. Hence also the name of the topic today being the call of Abraham. So Abram and Sarai, with their backs against the wall and at least not much left to keep them with their homeland, are called to go. 

Because essentially the only family they've got is the three of them walking away from this place after losing the people who defined them in the first half of life, the people that they were in deep relationship with, that kinship of what it meant to have a close brother who you knew your nephew well. Which makes me wonder, is it easier to respond to a call like this when you feel like you have nothing else left to lose? I think it might feel easier, but the reality is, even then, it's still hard, both physically and emotionally. 

I don't think anyone here is ready to wander through the land like Abram and his family do. Constantly picking up tent and moving and living somewhere else for a while and then picking up and moving. Most of us don't want to actually move our own boxes when we move from house to house. So there's no way that we would really want to do the amount of physical endurance required for Abram and Sarai and Lot. But 

when you don't feel like you have other options, it doesn't necessarily feel like a choice that you get the privilege of making. Instead, it might just feel like, well, I mean, what else are you going to do? Let's go. Which reminds me very much, and a lot of theologians talk about this is a story of migration, of leaving home with only the hopes and 

dreams of a better tomorrow. And as they travel, they're building home in a strange land, never feeling like they belong. And because of the fact that they never feel like they belong, Abraham does some really stupid stuff along the way. And that's the reality of when you're wandering towards something that you don't know what it's going to look like, but hope that you could have something in the future. There's also as their longing and their dreams are pulling them towards somewhere else, their pain and emotion is holding them back to where they were in the form of homesickness. 

But they know if they went back home, the same people they knew and loved there aren't there. And in the same sense, I'm sure they're constantly wondering that they have no idea how long they can last on this journey. Which once again makes it so I have empathy when Abram does some really dumb things just later in this chapter. 

So if you want to see all the shenanigans Abram is up to, just pick up where we left off in Genesis 12. And in all of these complex emotions as they're told to go, the promise they have is twofold. First, that they'll have children well beyond the age of 75. And also that they'll be blessed to then be a blessing going forth to strangers. 

And somehow, as they're wandering through these places, where they don't feel like they belong. They know that their presence is supposed to be a blessing for those people. Good biblical literacy should require us to read this promise to go into the land of Cana where the Canaanites already are, and to be blessed to be a blessing alongside the blessings of Noah's descendants and the diversity that followed. 

We read this text knowing the later history and think of stories of dominance and destruction. But that's not what Genesis has given us so far. God hasn't said, go to the land of the Canaanites because your descendants are going to wipe them out. Don't worry about it. Because God has already blessed the Canaanites and said that they are worthy of existing by sending them forth at the Tower of Babel and 

also blessing them with the rainbow in the Noah covenant. And so to interpret this as a story to go and take is not consistent with the story that has been told through the first 12 chapters of Genesis so far. Which is probably why God says that God will be doing the blessing and cursing of others. Abram and us are just told to go and be ready to be a blessing. God is promising that they will be present on the journey. 

And this is probably why the text is typically translated to curse. But like the Hebrew is kind of like belittle, like those who belittle, you all handle it kind of thing. It's almost an invitation to not hold a grudge, but just to keep this open orientation to others. And if you think about the call to go and be a blessing to everyone, if you're going to be a blessing to everyone, you cannot stay where you are. This call to go and be a blessing requires us to go, to leave our comfort zones, to go and encounter other people that aren't like us, like the Canaanites. 

Which also means it's going to include people that we don't want to be blessed, that we don't want to take the chance that they might do things the right way and walk away from it with a blessing from God. When we think that they deserve curses, so often we want to be the ones that are determining whether someone deserves a blessing or a curse. But God's already said God's got that. And while, like I've already kind of said that, a good way to read this is to not think of this in terms of dominance, because that's not what the story has been tolding us, so 

told us so far. So many people interpret this text as a promise and a right to take land. And we have to Ask as people who read the biblical text through the lens of Jesus, we have to ask if we're taking people's land, at whose expense are we doing so? 

When I was thinking of this, the modern example I came up with is probably not the one that you're thinking of because it's based off of like a banner article I read like a week or two ago because they're thinking about trying to fix this. But have you. I'm sure everyone has heard of the highway. 

Everyone in the room, maybe not Connor has heard of the highway to nowhere. We know about the highway to nowhere. A highway through the middle of downtown Baltimore. Well, not through the middle, through the side of downtown Baltimore to get to downtown Baltimore that goes nowhere. It's really weird to hop on that because you just like go fast for a little bit and then you go back into neighborhoods. 

The reality is exactly where that highway stands today were thriving black communities in the 50s and 60s. Because of that particular highway's construction. 971 homes, 62 businesses, one school, and almost 3,000 people were displaced to build this particular highway for white people to get from the outside of town to the business district easier. There was this great plan of demoing even more houses so 

that we can get from the white suburbs through the black parts of the city into the business district, through one highway to the next. But the other highways got canceled and we're left with this one strip throughout all of the highway construction, which we lost a whole chapel to because of the Beltway. A total of 94,000 people were displaced between 1965 and 1980. And today residents in black neighborhoods divided by Route 40 have the longest average commute times in Baltimore, 

almost three times greater than anyone in the white neighborhoods in Baltimore. If a right to land destroys the welfare of people groups, it is nowhere close to the calling of Abram because there is no blessing to others in it. Instead, it is clearly a sinful system that puts profits and convenience over taking care of of all of God's children. 

In a way, we have to convince all of the people that are the not in my backyard. Folks like, no, don't put that in my backyard. That if we don't want it in our backyard, it shouldn't belong in anyone's. That maybe we don't need that thing as a culture, that we shouldn't be using our power and privilege to move it to lesser folks property, but instead make sure that all of God's children are taken care of. 

We must pay attention to the command to go and be blessed to be a blessing if we're going to ever get this text, this Bible, this Gospel, anywhere close to right. And so to faithfully be a blessing, we have to be mindful of the work of God in others. Others around us, others that we don't think are like us, others that we perceive as different from us, others that live on the other side of the Beltway from us, others that live in places that we don't want to walk around at night. 

Others that live in other countries that are walking from one to the next. We have to go and be in community with them. Just like Abram and Sarai were sent to go and be amongst the Canaanites. We have to be willing to take relational risks that might challenge some of our identities that we grow up with. In the same way that Abram and Sarai abandoned their entire household, their entire way of living, their entire understanding of their identity to. 

To become a wandering people. And we must be ready to learn from others. Because as we learn about the belovedness of all of other God, like all of the other people that are God's children, we understand the image of God in them better. And understand God better. 

And understand better how best to be a blessing for all people. So let us pray. God change is always hard. To enter into conversations with people that we don't know or understand sometimes feels terrifying, especially when we've already been gifted narratives about them by the world that we live in. 

So may your spirit lead us to be more like the way that you called Abram to be. May you guide us and help us to be your loving presence. All of the people that we encounter tear down the walls that we've built up in our minds and hearts so that we can connect with all of your children. As we know from your command to Noah, that everyone is made in the image of the divine. 

May your spirit lead us to know your children better, so that as we go forth from this place into the world that surrounds us, we can be your people who love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously. Amen.