As I’ve already said, for the next few weeks we’re going to be thinking about journeying together.  Our reading today was about one of the most famous journeys in the Bible, and this is often the first place, people start when they begin to think of mission and the call of God.

The great promise of God to Abraham comes in Genesis 12:1-3, however, we have a real problem if we start there without referring to what has come before.  The whole point of what God initiates with his promise to Abraham only becomes clear when we see it against the background of the preceding chapters.

After the story of creation things go wrong in Genesis 3 when human beings choose to rebel against their creator, disobeying his authority and disregarding the boundaries he had set for their freedom in his world.  After the fall, men and women can go longer face one another without shame and blame.  Even the soil comes under the curse of God and the earth no longer responds to human touch as it should.

Chapters 4 to 11 combine an escalation of sin, alongside repeated marks of God’s grace.  After the flood, God renews his promise to creation, and human beings are again sent forth with God’s blessing to multiply and fill the Earth.  However, the story runs into trouble again in chapter 11.  The human decision to settle and to build a city with a tower designed to reach God seems to combine arrogance (in wanting to make a name for themselves) and insecurity (not wanting to be scattered over the whole Earth as God intended).  The tower of Babel story presents us with people who seem intent on invading heaven, even while resisting God’s will for them on Earth.

The result of all of this is chaos and it is not clear where the mission of God can go from here.  These problems are not going to be resolved by dealing with sin on an individual basis, but by dealing with sin for all people, and removing the curse on human beings by destroying death itself.  In fact, it takes the whole of the rest of the Bible, to enable us to understand God’s plan.

Amazingly, God sees an elderly, childless couple, and decides to make them the launchpad of his whole mission of cosmic redemption.  The call of Abram is the beginning of God’s answer to the evil of human hearts, the strife of nations, and the groaning brokenness of his whole creation.  It is the beginning of the mission of God and the mission of the people of God.

Genesis 10 and the first part of Chapter 11 focus on the nations of humanity.  In Genesis 10 they are scattering across the Earth in order to fill it as they were told to, however, in Genesis 11 they are scattering again, but this time in a state of confusion and division, after God gave them different languages.  It was during this second scattering that Terah moved to Haran with his family.  The problem is he started out heading for Canaan – Gen 11:31 But when they came to Haran, they settled there.

Imagine how he must have felt when his son went on to Canaan, leaving him behind.  What would he have felt? Happy that the journey was continuing? Anger that he was being left behind? Disappointment in himself for not continuing?

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

2 “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.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
    will be blessed through you.”

I don’t want you to have the idea that ‘mission’ is a New Testament thing.

Before we go too much further will need to realise that the blessing talked of here is not simply a spiritual thing.  Blessing is constituted by fruitfulness, abundance and fullness on one hand, and by enjoying rest in holy and harmonious relationship with God on the other.  Blessing is set within relationships that are both vertical and horizontal.  Blessing is depended on relationship with God, and blessing is something to be shared in relationship with other human beings.

Vertically, those who are blessed know the God who is blessing them, and seek to live in faithful relationship with God.  Horizontally, the relational element of blessings reaches out to those around.

If you continue reading the story of Abram you find that God did bless him with family and possessions, and ultimately it was through the line of Abraham that Jesus was born.  The patriarchs new that the blessings that accompanied them all their lives were all wrapped up with the relationship with God.  When Abraham’s grandson Jacob finally met his own grandsons in Egypt he knew from whom his blessing had come:  Genesis 48:15-16

“May the God before whom my fathers
    Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully,
the God who has been my shepherd
    all my life to this day,
the Angel who has delivered me from all harm
    —may he bless these boys.
May they be called by my name
    and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
and may they increase greatly
    on the earth.” 

On the other hand, horizontally, they are several instances of other people being blessed through contact with those whom God has blessed showing that those who inherit the promise of Abraham are expected to fulfil God’s purpose in being a blessing to others.

When we combine the dark pictures of Genesis 3 to 11, with the promise of blessing in chapter 12, we can anticipate that the following story will involve both realities.  We see that there will be two scenarios unfolding together: on the one hand, we know that human sin is always present, and the evidence is all too clear in the world today; on the other hand, we watch for the footprints of God’s blessing and look forward to how he will keep his first promise to bring about blessing for all nations.  From the call of Abraham, the idea of blessing takes on a historical dimension, injecting hope and faith into an otherwise dark and depressing story.

And that means also that blessing will be missional.  It is this promise of blessing to all nations through God’s choice of Abraham that drives forward the mission of God, and the mission of God’s people that flows from it.  At the most fundamental level, who are these people called Israel in the old Testament, and what were they there for?  They were intended to be the vehicle of God’s mission of extending his blessing to the nations.  They were to be a light to the nations, an example of how to live as children of God but we see the two strands working together – human sin and God’s blessing.  God blessed them, but they sinned and turned from him, so he punished them and they repented, so he blessed them, but they sinned

So who are we and what are we here for?  The answer hasn’t changed, we also are to be people through whom the nations are blessed.  We are expected to know the God who blesses us and, in turn, be a blessing to people around us. 

Generally, the church in the west has had a real problem over the last 150 or so years.  We’ve done what Terah did – got so far and settled.  One of the biggest contributors to that has been – church buildings.  So much energy goes into the building that sometimes the building becomes more important than the mission – ask anyone who has been through a union.  But, more than that, the building set limits even if they weren’t expressed.  If your building was full you didn’t need to convert more people and in days when church was much more central to the life of society it might have been that the idea of mission was to go overseas or do a week in the summer.  However, as society changes and people stop attending church it becomes increasingly difficult to interact and engage with them and a generation of people see mission as being for other people.  We end up with empty buildings, and buildings that are not fit for purpose, but the building still takes up time and money.

You might say that lots of good things have happened over the last 100 years as well and that is absolutely true – there have been great revivals where God has moved powerfully in people’s lives, there has been great missionary endeavour overseas, there has been growth in some churches and in many individuals and there has been some fantastic community work.  Unfortunately this has been the exception, rather than the rule.

It is into that general scenario that the Church of Scotland has, through the Panel on Review and Reform and Ministries Council, introduced the Path of Renewal pilot scheme which involves 23 congregations from across Scotland.  Essentially, we know that the church is not particularly effective at its core function – making disciples.  For decades the main operating model has been attractional: we’re here, and you should come to see what we offer.  That model doesn’t really work today and so we need to find another model with which to engage the communities we serve.

Path of Renewal is a programme for churches to think, and work through, how they can be more relevant in society today. 

It begins by recognising the missional challenge of a changing culture – understanding that the culture outside the church has changed and is very much more secular than Christian.  The church now finds itself on the fringe of society rather than at the centre, and that raises questions about what church should look like when it’s no longer at the heart of the community, or a place people would instinctively turn to for support.  We know that sitting back and expecting people to come is no longer a realistic option.  Instead, we need to go and move beyond our comfort zones and reshape what we do. 

Part of that must be to remember that the call to Abraham and the promised blessing is still there.  God still wants his people to understand that they are blessed by him and they are expected to be a blessing to others, but how can we do that unless we are with them.  Perhaps the next phase of the journey is to be more focussed on being a blessing to people in the way we live our lives each day, rather than thinking we can do all we need to in an hour on a Sunday.

It is a challenge, but it is not insurmountable.  How do I know that?  Because the God who called and blessed Abraham, Isaac and Jacob calls and blesses us and one of the last things Jesus said to his disciples was this (Matt 26:18-20) “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

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