“Untitled Sermon about Abraham Before He was Abraham”

• Scriptural Reference: Genesis 12:1-4
• February 17, 2008

One of the most shattering verses in the Bible sits in this passage. At first it doesn’t seem like much. In fact, you can read right over it and not even notice it. That would be unfortunate. The verse sets the tone for the whole biblical message. The verse establishes a lynchpin reality of the Christian faith. The character of the verse repeats countless times throughout the biblical narrative. Moses confronted it. Isaiah, Amos, Paul, Samuel, Eli, Zechariah, and a host of others all dealt with it. It would be unfortunate to overlook this verse because when you understand the full implications packed in it, and begin living by it, you’ll experience the faith that God always intended for his people. Let’s read that verse again: “Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran.”

We don’t know what it was like when Abram first realized God had something new for him. We don’t know where Abram was when the call came. Was he out surveying his herds? Was he sitting in his house working through his accounts? Was he at dinner with his family, servants bustling around? Did the realization dawn on him slowly, like a spark igniting a little flame, then catches fire into an internal inferno? Or was he knocked over as he walked beside one of his irrigated fields not too far from the banks of the Euphrates? Did he go tearing into the house and say, “Sarai? Where are you? Come here! I have an announcement!”

Whatever, can you imagine how the news would’ve been received? We don’t have any information about that, but whether they protested or immediately accepted, the upshot of the whole thing was this: “Folks, I’ve been talking with God and God wants us to pull up stakes. He wants us to leave all these familiar surroundings where we’ve been comfortable all these years. All the customs with which we’re familiar and we’ve grown to love, all these neighbors, this country where I’m an established and powerful citizen – everything – God has told us to leave behind so we can go.”

And perhaps it would’ve been Sarai who would’ve said the obvious. “Where are we going?”

And Abram would’ve had to say, “Well, God hasn’t made that clear, yet. He only said, ‘Go.’”

If Sarai didn’t say it, someone had to have at least thought it: “Abram, are you absolutely out of your mind? You’re seventy-five years old, for goodness sakes! You’re an established businessman. You’ve got stock (quite literally) in this place! You’ve got a house! Now you’re saying you’re going to pull up stakes and leave? And you don’t even know where you’re going? Abram, that kind of adventurism is for young bucks, not old guys like you. Don’t you know? You can’t teach an old dog new tricks!”

Well, we don’t have a record of what Abram’s neighbors or family said. We don’t have any record of what Abram said, either. We DO have the record of what Abram did. At seventy-five years of age, he left everything that had been familiar and struck out into the unknown, heading for a yet undisclosed location. Evidently, both Abram and God didn’t believe that the inability to teach old dogs new tricks applied to humans.

This little passage rocks. It flies in the face of all of our assumptions. Most of us think that when we’ve passed into middle age, we quit innovating, and this is the natural thing. We think it’s natural to guard tradition, that it’s our earned lot to sit back and relax, that it’s just fine, natural, and the order of all things to enshrine the way we’ve always done things as if they had been that way since God called forth firm land from the watery firmament. “I’m old, son. Don’t expect me to start learning anything new now.”

Add to that the fact that most of us are downright skeptical of new things. You can see this in how we respond to new trends in music. My dad hated my music. “Turn it down, dad-burn-it!” One day when I played a Glenn Miller record I’d found, he rocked back, closed his eyes and said, “now THAT’S music.” I would never be that way, I insisted, prejudiced against the new stuff. Then I heard grunge rock. To tell you the truth, I can’t wait to get old enough to hear what the current kids say about the music their kids listen to. I imagine the pattern will continue.

But look here! God doesn’t go to the young guy to begin his innovation. He goes to the old guy. It’s as if God’s saying, “Your patterns are not my patterns. Your way of thinking is not my way of thinking. I have a plan here and I want you to carry it out. Sure, your culture, as well as every other human culture to come around, will expect the young people to do the heroic work, but I pick YOU regardless of age.” But this is the God-pattern. He constantly overlooks qualifications. He picked Moses to be the law giver even though he was a terrible public speaker. He picked David to be the quintessential king even though he had no experience in the military. He picked a prostitute Rahab to be part of the Messiah’s lineage. He picked untrained, lower class fishermen to be the vanguard of a world-wide renewal movement. He picked a carpenter to be the Messiah. And over and over again, he picked old people to herald and usher in the new age.

Maybe Abram resisted God’s first call. Maybe Abram said, “Hey, Lord, you know you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Obviously, in one way or another, God responded with, “That might be true of old dogs, but you’re not a dog. Look at the end of your wrist. That’s not a paw. You’ve got an opposable thumb.”

None of you met my dog, Larry. Larry was the smartest dog the world has ever known. It wasn’t until Larry spent 14 years with Julie and me that I understood why Mr. Bo-jangles grieved for 20 years after his dog died. I still miss Larry. He was a mix of retriever, Belgium shepherd, a little bit of chow, and a few hundred other lines. He was a mutt.

But Larry understood hundreds of statements and commands – all surrounding fetching a tennis ball. That was his call in life – fetching a tennis ball. When you’d come into the room where Larry was resting, his head would perk up, his ears at attention, his jaw set, his tail twitching back and forth in expectant wag-ettes. I’d say, “Larry, get your ball,” and he’d spring up as if he’d been shocked. He’d grab his ball and dance at the door, nails clicking on the linoleum, tail in full wag, expectant whimpers rippling through his throat. Then, when the door opened, he launched out, all 70 pounds as if he weighed 20. He’d drop the ball at your feet and when you threw it, he’d be on it in a matter of seconds. If you threw it in an arch high up in the air, he’d run under it and catch it, in full stride, leaping through the air, more graceful than the finest ballerina.

And you could tell him to stop, and he’d stop in mid pursuit. He’d tremble in anticipation. Slowly he’d turn to look at you and when you pointed, he’d tear off again, throwing clumps of sod into the air with the force of his acceleration.

And then, when he was panting and slavering and the ball was a gooey, slimy mess, and you couldn’t squeegee any more spit out of it, and he was nigh-on to having an exhaustive collapse – he’d have chased that ball until his heart exploded, I’m sure – I’d say to him, “Larry, this is the last time. After this throw, take the ball back to the basement.” And Larry’s ears would droop, and after the ball was thrown, he’d run in endless circles sniffing where the ball had rolled, delaying the end of the fetching session, until I’d say, “Larry?” And he’d take the ball to the basement and lap up water in those loud, rhythmic slurps.

In those days, I changed my own oil. I’d drive my old VW Rabbit up on little ramps and twist the oil filter off the bottom of the engine after draining the oil. I didn’t have a wheeled come-along. Instead, I crawled like an infantry soldier under barbed wire, turning on my back until I was under the engine. Then I’d fish for my filter wrench without looking having usually placed it by the front tire.

One day, I’d crawled up under the car and reached for the wrench. It wasn’t there. I remembered. I’d been distracted by a telephone call which had interrupted my routine. About twenty minutes before, I’d had a tennis ball chasing session with Larry. He was resting in the grass about ten feet away from the driveway. When I realized that the filter wrench was lying beside my tool box, I let out a sigh and said, “Oh, goodness.” Larry’s ears perked. He knew my tone and knew I needed something. He walked over to the car where my feet were sticking out from under the front bumper. I knew I was going to have to crawl back out and get my wrench myself, but just for the sake of the humor, which I knew only I would enjoy, I said, “Hey Larry, how about fetching my filter wrench from the tool box there?”

And you know what Larry did? You know what that smart dog did? You know what that loyal, wonderful creature, man’s best friend, did? He ran through the open basement door, straight to the work bench – and brought me the tennis ball!

It was the tennis ball we’d played catch with earlier and it was still quite slimy. He dropped where my feet stuck out from under the car and since the driveway was on a slight incline, it rolled along my side and came to rest against my neck, where I couldn’t move away from it, wedged as I was in a rather cramped space underneath a VW Rabbit, and left a sheen of spit and slime along my neck right up to my ear lobe. Oh, if Larry only could have understood what a filter wrench was!

You’re not old dogs! You know the difference between tennis balls and filter wrenches. Look at the end of your wrists! That’s not a paw. That’s an opposable thumb. You’re not old dogs. You’re children of the kingdom. You’re children of Abraham who struck out into the unknown when he was 75 years old simply because God said that that’s how God intended to bless the world.

So much religion boils down to chasing tennis balls when God really needs us to pick up a filter wrench. We might even be real enthusiastic about chasing tennis balls, but what good is it if God needs a filter wrench?

I imagine that Abram was mighty comfortable in Haran. After all, he was wealthy, which meant he had a lot of stuff surrounding him to make him comfortable. But God had an adventure in mind, and called Abram to pursue it. Strike out for an unknown destination – and Abram did it, and became the center of the three monotheistic world religions, the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Three billion of the planet’s religious people stem from Abram’s faithfulness. Abram knew, somewhere in his deepest being, that life was not for his comfort, but for the adventure of faith. It was not about Abram – it was all about God.

It’s still that way. Look around you, folks! Hanover County is growing. All over the place are new cookie cutter developments filled full of people living cookie cutter lives, people who’ve sucked in deeply the culture’s elixir of comfort. But their souls are crying out for the kind of meaning, energy, and direction that can only come from cutting loose and striking out toward an undisclosed location. In other words, they’re badly in need of the adventure of faith.

If Walnut Grove Baptist Church is going to quit chasing tennis balls and pick up the filter wrench, it will happen when the Abrams in our midst lead in launching out into a new adventure. Don’t tell me that you’ve paid your dues. Your experience has only been training for the real adventure of getting something new and relevant going. Young people can propose new things out the wazoo, but until the old folks lead in the process of thinking new ways of doing things, there will only be the slime of sticky tennis balls.

As a matter of fact, I don’t know any more insidious and evil cliché than this old-dog thing. Listen to what actual scientific research as discovered. You can find this yourself in the book Age Wave researched and written by Ken Dychtwald and Joe Fowler. Listen to this.

By now, the scientific community has completely discredited [the old-dog myth]. It is now recognized that in the absence of specific neurological diseases, aging by itself produces no diminution whatsoever in mental acuity until well into the seventies, on the average. From that point on, the only drop in mental functioning that can be attributed to the aging process itself is an inconvenient, but no incapacitating, loss of short-term memory. Brain scan studies undertaken at the National Institute of Aging and based directly on metabolic activity have shown that “the healthy aged brain is as active and efficient as the healthy young brain.

They conclude this paragraph with this statement: “In reality, there is no such disease as senility.”

They go on to say this: Study after scientific study has shown that people who stay active and intellectually challenged not only maintain their mental alertness but also live longer. And they live those extra years in better health than those who simply retreat from engaging in social activities. Chances are that if you continue to challenge yourself, your sharpness and understanding will increase with age.

Did you know that the fabled Colonel Sanders of KFC fame got his empire started with a social security check he received after he’d turned 65? Goethe completed Faust when he was over 80. Alexander von Humbolt, the great scientist, worked out his major contributions in The Kosmos between the ages of 76 and 90. Michelangelo became the chief architect for St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome when he was 71 and remained on the job until he was 89. George Bernard Shaw wrote Far Fetched Fables when he was 93. Pablo Picasso painted into his 90’s. Arthur Rubenstein gave what reviewers called, “a stunning performance” at Carnegie Hall at 90. He died when he was 95. Pablo Casals was still touring at 88. He died when he was 96. Benjamin Franklin became ambassador to France when he was 70 and learned French fluently. He died at 84. And right here in Richmond, Harwood Cochrane, a member of Tabernacle Baptist Church, sold Overnight Transportation to Union Pacific when he was in his 70’s, then started a new trucking company, Highway Express, when he was 80. Harwood is still kicking – and I mean kicking, at 96!

When Abram left Haran, he accepted God’s challenge. The whole world was blessed. And he found life abundant and rich. What’s your Haran? I don’t care what your age is – God calls you to launch out. You’re not an old dog. You’re his child.