On a late summer night, with just a hint of autumn around the edges, my daughter and I caught a train downtown to see Wilco at Millennium Park. As the sky went dark, the skyline lit up, and all the colors of the city were mashed together on those brushed metallic shapes soaring above the stage. The sound was exquisite, the sky was cloudless, the air was crisp, the crowd was shabby chic and nerdy cool, and Wilco rocked! With my daughter beside me ~ taking it all in, text messaging a boy, and tolerating my taste in music ~ everything was in a good-God-blessed-groove.

 

Midway through the concert Wilco began a song with a gentle melody that rose to a cataclysmic climax and then fell away to a barely voiced whisper:

 

Searching for home, searching for home, searching for home, via Chicago,

I’m coming home, I’m coming home, I’m coming home, via Chicago…

 

And, hushed and holy the crowd of fifteen thousand sang along. Now, I am not a hand raiser in church, but my hands went up and in deep thanksgiving tears pooled in my eyes from the sheer beauty of it all. My daughter, the music, and the night were overwhelmingly grace-full ~ with fifteen thousand yuppies singing of their search for home…

 

Maybe that reads too much into the lyrics and the moment, but it felt like a hymn-sing for young professionals trying to find

honest relationships,

and a sense of purpose,

and an authentic connection to community,

and a hope for the world bigger than our own selfish impulses,

and a place to belong.

 

In a word, it was a mighty chorus of people longing for shalom.

 

Shalom ~ that rich biblical word that is far more than a feeling and far more than the absence of conflict. Shalom as Nicholas Wolterstorff and Neil Plantinga define it:

 

…universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight ~ a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, all under the arch of God’s love.

 

On a garden lawn between the lake and the towered city of man it seemed like we were singing of our longing for shalom.

           

Searching for home, searching for home, searching for home via Chicago…

For, we don’t live in shalom.

We live in a world where men with guns kill women in stores and students in class,

where creation’s resources are plundered for production and profit,

where the scales of an equitable economy are out of whack,

where ethnic and religious violence rages and terrorizes,

where the arch of God’s love is missing, or muted, or marred.

We live in a world that ~ to quote language from the First Sunday of Lent ~ is marked by fear, alienation, and estrangement.   

           

The story scripture tells is that with the spoilage of shalom we were kicked out of the garden and death became our lot.

In Genesis 2 we are reminded that we will all surely die;

by Genesis 4 brother has murdered brother;

by Genesis 6 violence has filled the world until God floods the whole the mess; and by Genesis 11 we’re building towers to make a name for ourselves.

So, in Genesis 12 God breaks in and calls Abram.

 

One way to read God’s call of Abram is that as the world careened into chaos God breaks in to establish a covenant through which all creation would be blessed and God’s way of shalom would be restored. In the words of Walter Brueggemann:

 

The purpose of the call is to fashion an alternative community in a creation gone awry, to embody in human history the power of the blessing. It is the hope of God that in this new family all human history can be brought into the unity and harmony intended by the one who calls.

 

It is a call to blessing. It is a call to shalom. It is a call back home.

 

“Slow Man” is a Nobel Prize winning novel about an old bachelor who loses a leg in a bicycle accident. The novel is about loss, and aging, and finding self. At one point, while talking about home, the old man says:

 

Hearth and home, say the English. To them, home is the place where the fire burns in the hearth, where you come to warm yourself. The place where you will not be left out in the cold…. Among the French, as you know, there is no home. Among the French to be at home is to be among ourselves, among our kind…

 

Now, I don’t know if that is true about the English and the French, but it is a helpful distinction: home as place or home as people.

 

It is easy to read the call of Abram as the call to a place,

Go to the land I will show you…

Or, as the call to a people,

I will make you into a great nation…

 

Home as place. Home as people.

 

But!

But what if God’s call to Abram is not primarily about the place and the people?

What if those are only avenues to the blessing that God desires for all creation?

So, God breaks in to restore right relationship,

to restore belonging,

to restore purpose,

to restore shalom.

 

In a world marked by fear, alienation, estrangement, and death, God calls Abram and Sarai to be a channel of blessing for all people. Place and people are only the conduits to a way back home.

 

Now, what is lost in our text this morning is that Abram was the last branch of a family tree. His father was dead, one brother was dead, and the other brother was left behind, so all Abram had to offer was his broken down old body and the barren womb of his wife.

And yet, God chose Sarai and Abram.

He didn’t choose Ham or Shem,

Nahor or Nimrod,

Siskel or Ebert,

Calvin or Hobbs,

God chose Abram.

 

What if the point of picking Abram is that humanity is at a dead end?

In the natural process of begetting and begatting,

in the unfolding of generations,

in being fruitful and multiplying,

God picks Sarai and Abram precisely because they are an ending.

They are powerless to fix a future.

They are hopeless to make a family.

They can’t conjure up or create a thing.

They can’t even imagine anything different.

The best they can offer is barrenness.

 

In words of Walter Brueggemann,

 

“Barrenness is the way of human history.”

 

But, God breaks in and says:

 

I’ll make a way ~ you follow.

I’ll lead you home ~ you trust.

I’ll restore shalom ~ you be a blessing to others.

 

 

 

Dear friends, on the Second Sunday in Lent, does that read too much into this text?

For a people with a deep longing for shalom in our bellies,

for a people with the memory of the garden fixed in our imaginations,

for a people imprinted with the image of God,

for a people who are barren ~

is it plausible that God would break in and make covenant with a wandering Aramaen for the sake of creation’s shalom?

Does God break in to lead us home?

 

Scripture reads of God’s relentless search to restore shalom.

I hesitate to use the language of God “searching” as if he can’t find it, or can’t get it right, or is impotent to effect the change he wants….But, there is an unfolding quality to the story of God and his free and fallen creation. He creates and commands and seeks and promises and prods and picks to get to the shalom for which creation was intended.

 

And, that search for shalom ultimately makes it’s through Christ, and the cross, and the resurrection. That search for shalom is ultimately about God choosing, calling, you.

 

I don’t know what you brought with you this morning:

            Maybe your broken down old body?

            Maybe your barrenness?

            Maybe a weary soul searching for home?

Maybe buoyant thanksgiving?

Maybe indifference?

Maybe a deep longing to join a chorus singing for shalom?

 

Well, the good news is that God keeps breaking in and calling you ~ with a grace beyond all human imagining ~ to be blessing for others. The way of shalom is the way of forgiveness, and thanksgiving, and servanthood, and death, and resurrection. Ours is simply a matter of following. You are blessed to be blessing.

 

In the early 1900s Charles de Foucauld was an aristocrat who joined the French army in Algeria, then left it, and made his home there, serving the poor, learning the language, and founding a new religious order, which became “The Little Brothers of Jesus.”

 

Foucauld is said to have penned a prayer called “The Prayer of Abandonment.” It echoes Abrams response. May it be your Lenten prayer; may it be a prayer that leads you home.

 

Shall we pray:

 

Father, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you: I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures -
I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul:

I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence, for you are my Father.

 

Amen. 

 

Note: I am indebted to an essay by Jim Wallis for the prayer of Charles de Foucauld.