Sermon: Faith Walks

Texts: Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

Date: February 20, 2005

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

My husband John was doing a Fozzy Bear impression the other day—who knows why? It happens. You know muppet Fozzy Bear’s signature line? A-Wocka, wocka, wocka! It’s what Fozzy follows his usually feeble jokes with. Anyway, he looked around at the end of the Fozzy schtick and saw that our dog, Olive, was in a frenzy. Can you guess why? It’s because she loves that word “walk.” She thought John was offering to take her for a walk, a walk, a walk! And our dog is always ready for a walk, a walk, a walk. You can wake her up out of a sound sleep in the dead of night and ask her if she wants to go for a walk and she is instantly at the door, panting to get out into the wide world. We try to be very careful about saying that word out loud at our house—we use words like “perambulation” or “constitutional” if we’re trying to decide whether or not to go out so we won’t disappoint Olive if we end up sinking back into our chairs.

The question of whether dogs have souls or dogs have faith is a good topic for recreational theology. I do think dogs are exemplars of trust, for the most part. Our dog, once invited on a walk, never asks where we’re going or how long it will take or whether it will be fun or how we will get there. Okay, I know she can’t talk, but even if she could, I doubt she would ask a lot of questions about a walk. She just puts her trust in the master/mistress, assumes it’s going to be a great adventure, and off we go.

I wonder if God ever wishes we would act a little more like dogs when God is urging us to new destinations on our faith journeys? Doesn’t this short story about Abraham remind you a little bit of a loyal dog? God says, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Two verses later, “So Abram went.” An invitation to a journey without roadmaps, timelines, or even a destination announced—and Abram goes, an exemplar of faith and trust. This is one of the stories that makes Abram/Abraham a hero to three religions.

You may have had a moment like Abram’s in your faith journey, a moment when you knew you were setting out for a new place. You may be able to identify in your personal history a time when you understood you were leaving an old life behind and setting out on a new one. Stories of crossing that threshold are often called “conversions” in Christian parlay.

But we might have, since that moment of departure, lost some of the sense of adventurous journey in the life of faith. Susan Gregg-Schroder tells a story about walking her dog Chelsea. Chelsea is like our dog Olive, you just say the “W” word and she’s dancing the cha-cha-cha at the front door. One day when they were walking, Susan decided to rest on a bench and enjoy the surrounding scenery for a few moments. Chelsea immediately sprawled out on the ground, relaxing in the sunshine, all the while keeping one eye open in case there were any cats nearby. One of Susan’s neighbors happened to walk by and casually remarked, “I see you and Chelsea are out for a walk.” Chelsea was immediately on her feet, wagging her tail furiously, and straining on her leash. She had heard the magic word, “walk.” Only she had forgotten that she was already out on a walk! Maybe we’re like that, too, forgetting from time to time that we are already out on a walk, that we are already on a journey, and that God is our traveling companion.

Sometimes I would rather think of faith being like a bunker than faith being like a journey—how about you? I’d like to think of faith as a strong structure that will protect me from whatever is incoming!! And faith does serve us that way, as we perceive ourselves under the shelter of the Almighty’s wings. But having faith that’s always and only a bunker, a defense from change, a shelter from outside threats, is hazardous to a person’s spiritual health. We can’t spend our life in relationship to God lying down in the sun, keeping one eye open for threats. Faith is a journey that takes us somewhere, from who we were to who we are becoming.

Life has a way of serving up reminders that we are on a walk after all. We get nudged by something, either positive or negative, and wake up to the fact that we’re on the move, that we’re walking with God, not hunkering down with God. A peak experience might do it, a vision or deep spiritual insight or a dream so meaningful that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Suddenly you realize that you aren’t in the same place you were spiritually just a short time ago. Oh, we’re on a walk. I guess I’ve had quite a few moments like that over the years. Once I heard a wonderful sermon that might as well have been tailor-made for me, as it dealt with a spiritual issue with which I was wrestling; it was an answer to a question I’d been asking. That preacher didn’t know me at all; it was God walking with me, and wow, I was aware again that I was on the move.

A crisis can have a similar effect. Crisis takes you into an unknown land, a place for which you have no maps. You’re on the move toward a place you didn’t want to go. That’s the very moment when many of us re-discover that God is our traveling companion, the awful times when we feel we’re stumbling in the dark. God doesn’t put us up in a bunker during those times, but draws alongside us in such a way that we know we’re not alone in this strange and frightful place. Fred Craddock tells a story about meeting a young woman during her freshman year of college. She told him, “I was a failure in my classes, I wasn’t having any dates, and I didn’t have as much money as the other students. I was just so lonely and depressed and homesick and not succeeding. One Sunday afternoon I went to the river near the campus. I had climbed up on the rail and was looking into the dark water below. For some reason or another I thought of the line, ‘Cast all your cares upon him for he cares for you.’” She said, “I stepped back, and here I am.” Craddock asked, “Where did you learn that line?” She said, “I don’t know.” Craddock asked, “Do you go to church?” She answered “No…Well, when I visited my grandmother in the summers we went to Sunday School and church.” Ah.[1] Oh, we’re on a walk. Even if we haven’t been conscious of it in a long, long time.

Dis-ease of various kinds can be a reminder that we’re on a journey. If we’ve been dwelling in faith as a bunker, we may come to a point when the bunker feels way too small and claustrophobic. We come to an understanding that what we have believed doesn’t fit our experience any more. And it’s time to move on. Maybe you’ve always thought it was God’s job to give the good people what they want and punish the wicked people. And real life teaches you that this isn’t the way it seems to work. This is the point at which some people take a detour into atheism, when their old ideas about God don’t fit their experience. But discomfort with old ideas can also be an occasion for remembering—oh, we’re on a walk. I’m trying to know my traveling companion better as we walk along. Some of my child’s notions about faith are falling along the wayside like excess baggage. Oftentimes the mystery surrounding this traveling companion is so dazzling that I don’t think I have the first idea who I’m walking with. And yet the presence of the companion is steadfast, if I can only trust that more will be revealed.

As far as I can tell, Abram didn’t know much about God when he was called to journey to the unknown land which God promised to show him. There was no scripture yet, no church, no ritual, no law, no Sunday school teachers. Yahweh has no credentials. Would you go somewhere with someone who just said, “Go,” without even telling you where? It depends on who’s doing the asking, doesn’t it? Somehow Abram had the notion that God was trustworthy. “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.”

Maybe the thing that Abram seemed to know about God—that God is trustworthy—is the most important thing or even the only thing we really have to know about God. We don’t know where we’re going on this journey of faith, and we’re not altogether sure who this mysterious divine companion is, because ultimately God is ineffable. But all we really need to know is that God is trustworthy.

Is trust in God a muscle that needs to be exercised? Does the inclination to trust in God weaken like a decaying leg muscle of a person in a wheelchair if we rarely use it? How do we go about exercising the “trust muscle?”

We each have unique opportunities to exercise trust. Some of us will be challenged to trust less in our accumulated wealth and trust more in God’s care. We have ample opportunities in this church this year to exercise that kind of trust, as we reflect on investing some of our accumulated assets in the future well-being of this church home.

Some of us will be challenged to trust less in the despairing news broadcast daily by the media and trust more in the world ultimately being in God’s hands. One of Lily Tomlin’s lines is, “No matter how cynical I become, I just can’t keep up.” Now, it is appropriate for us to be concerned and compassionate when we see God’s earth being damaged and God’s children being hurt. It is appropriate for us to be angry and work to change things. It is inappropriate to conclude that the whole earth is going to hell in a hand basket, because that ignores the steadfast love and leadership of the God who is still trying to lead us to a Promised Land.

Some of us will be challenged to trust less in the purpose or role that has been imposed upon us by polite society and trust more in the purpose offered by the Still Speaking God. We lead tight, tame little lives, many of us, afraid to stand up for anything because we don’t want to offend, afraid to make needed changes because it’s not what people have come to expect from us. We’re more conventional than compassionate, more civil than forgiving, more jovial than just. We’ve accepted the mold that has been offered to us, and we don’t give much time to thinking about whether God might have something greater in mind for us. We don’t pause to listen for what a Still Speaking God might be trying to tell us. But listen. God is trustworthy. Breaking out of the mold may be a call to freedom and blessings you have not yet imagined.

Go to the land that I will show you. It’s not a call to Abram alone but to generations of Abraham’s descendants who put their trust in God. We’re on a walk. Faith walks forward. Exercise trust, as Frank Laubach did when he wrote this in 1930: “To be able to look backward and say, ‘This, this has been the finest year of my life’—that is glorious! To be able to look ahead and say, ‘The present year can and shall be better!’—that is more glorious! I have done nothing but open windows—God has done the rest. There has been a succession of marvelous experiences of the friendship of God. I resolved that I would succeed better this year with my experiment of filling every minute full of the thought of God than I succeeded last year. And I added another resolve: to be as wide open toward people and their need as I am toward God. Windows open outward as well as upward. Windows open especially downward where people need the most!”[2] Frank Laubach’s walk with God led to his developing an “Each One, Teach One” literacy program that has been credited with teaching some 60 million illiterate people to read.

Anyone for a walk, a walk, a walk?

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[1] Craddock, Fred Craddock Stories St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2001, p. 33

[2] Frank Laubach, in Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics, San Francisco, 1993