19th
Sunday after Pentecost
October
07, 2007
Rev.
Elizabeth Macaulay
“Living the Promise”
Genesis 15:1-2, 5b-6,
17:7, 21:5-6
1
John 4:7-21
There are not many
things like it.
Being
out doors at night, under a vast and starry sky.
Whether you are in the Boundary Waters or on a golf course or on your
Grandmother’s porch, sitting under the spangle of stars is an intensely
spiritual experience.
Because
in the midst of the vastness of all that is… you are. A creature in God’s creation.
And it is truly a
wonder.
There are promises God
makes with us. We call them covenants. They are two-way agreements between the
Holy and our selves. They are promises with words and signs. We heard about the
covenant with Noah, symbolized by the rainbow, a promise that God will never
again destroy us through flood.
And there is the
promise God makes to Abram and to us through the shine of the stars. Abram will
be blessed with descendents. And we, who hear the promise generations later, we
know through this promise that we too, as children of Abraham, will be blessed
with a future.
God makes that promise.
But a covenant is a two-way agreement. So what is our role in living the
promise?
We are to remember
always whose children we are. We are God’s. And being people of God comes with
an expectation that we will know ourselves to carry within us the shine of the
stars. And, we are to know that all people carry that shine. We are kin. With all that lives. And as kin, there is no pain or delight
that is not our own.
First John speaks this
promise so very eloquently. How can we say we love God, whom we have never
seen, and treat our brothers and sisters, who are created in the image of God,
with anything but reverence?
How can we treat
creation and the amazing grace of the gifts of God with anything other than
gratitude? How can we hoard and clutch and refrain from sharing our abundance
when there is nothing in this life that we have been given
that is not gift of God?
Abram, the faith
ancestor of the Jews, Christians and Muslim traditions, was an immigrant. He
was a man who set out for a land that was not his own. And we know that
immigrants then and now have to summon immense courage to leave the known and
step out into the unknown. We know that in our heads, and we nod sagely when we
honor Abram for the courage it took to step out in faith and set out for a new
land.
As a culture in the
year 2007,we have a harder time sometimes with making
the heart leap it takes to admire and embrace to those who make a decision to
set out for a new land.
On Thursday this last
week I had lunch with the clergy of
What she share with us was the story of her district. And that
district is a diverse star shine.
When describing the
student population, she shared these figures:
An article in The Sun magazine
shared an interview with Tram Nguyen, a Vietnamese woman among the first load
of “boat people” to escape war-torn
In the body of the
interview, she makes this observation:
“Immigrating anywhere is not that attractive an option:
it takes a lot of guts to leave your home, risk your life in the desert or at
sea, go somewhere where you don’t know a soul, and live in debt. Much of what’s
driving human migration is the fact that 80 percent of the world’s wealth is
being controlled in the industrialized West by 20 percent of the world’s
population. As a society we have to face up to the consequences of this global imbalance.
We have to equalize conditions globally so that people are pushed or pulled to
this country. Much of the problem is rooted in the unequal “free trade”
policies pursued by the
God made with Abram and
his descendents the promise of the future. It shines in the stars that light
the sky over the people of
And we, who are the
descendants and inheritors of that promise have our
part of the covenant to keep. As we become a more diverse community, we must
bear witness as children of the promise that the abundant grace of God enfolds
the rainbow of people who are our kin. We will live community in such a way
that all live into the promise of blessing. With full bellies, equal access to
education and the respect and inclusion that are God givens.
The phrase “think
globally, act locally” could not be any more apt than when we consider the
ministry we participate in through Volunteers Enlisted to Assist People, a
coalition of faith based communities who believe that the shine of the Holy
that shines within each of God’s createds needs
compassion and a sense of kinship to truly shine.
Susan Freeman,
Executive Director of VEAP, will share with you now and between services some
of the ways we live the promise of God through opening our hearts and wallets
through the ministries of our church: