Grounded in Ambiguity

 All our sermons through Lent begin with this quote from sculptor and environmentalist Anthony Goldsworthy. We often forget that we are nature. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we have lost our connection to ourselves.

 

Our Lent journey continues this morning standing on the land with Abram and Sarai.

An intricate and diverse natural landscape surrounds them: vast flood planes of the great Tigris and Euphrates rivers; pastures of grass and scrubby trees; wilderness of rocky plateaus, shifting sands, and dry riverbeds; in the distance smoky horizons suggest a vast beyond. Across the land stretch animal runs, hunting trails,  footpaths, dusty roads, and caravan routes.

 

In this land, God approaches Abram. Today’s passage begins with this expression of God’s nature. God is present and relational. Just like God came to walk in the garden, to commune with nature, and to talk with humankind, God comes to the land to talk with Abram. We hear God speak of a potentially extravagant promise. We learn that God’s nature dreams really big. In conversation with Abram, God’s nature offers human nature an alternative to current reality. God’s nature offers a perspective beyond what is seen and experienced.

At first hearing, the passage, sounds hope-filled and encouraging. God is going to do the work, leading Abram and Sarai to a land that I will show you. Attached is a promise of enormous blessing that includes becoming a great nation with a great name. And to sweeten the invitation God declares that you will be a blessing. And what’s more is that all the families of the earth shall be blessed

God’s dream is inclusive in scope, abundant in blessing, filled with promise, excitingly adventurous.

 

But it doesn’t take long for my true nature to say, “Wait a minute.” Surely this invitation is too good to be true! Everything inside me screams, “This is risky!” The story presents to Abram and Sarai too many unknowns and much too much uncertainty. When I go on vacation I take a map, electronic and paper. Hotels are booked long before I start the journey. Each day I have an idea of the stops along the way. There is a plan from me leaving my home to the final destination. Before I decide to travel somewhere, I also take the time to evaluate my ability, do a risk assessment, and decide if my budget can handle the trek.

The story of Abram and Sarai surprises me. It surprises me because by nature I am more cautious and controlled when it comes to travelling and leaving home. As for reasons not to accept God’s invitation, human nature might have turned to excuses and focusing on inadequacies: from Abram, we are too old; from Sarai, we are barren; together, we are lacking. The surprise of the story is that human nature accepts God’s call to live beyond human ability and certainty.

Abram says, “Yes” – to go from his country and kindred, without a map, without a plan, without a destination, without a timeline, without answers to the million ‘who, what, when, why, where, how” questions that immediately flood my brain.

 

My colleague the Rev. Rick Pyrce wrote a poem about this story and the story of Nicodemus from the Gospel of John. The poem notes the ambiguity in the stories and considers the necessity of ambiguity to create curiosity and an openness to receive a ‘new-to-us’ perspective. Abram grows into the promise by entering the uncertainty, the ambiguity of the journey.  This kind of blew my mind. God is at home in ambiguity.

Human nature not so much. Not many of us will boldly shout to the world, “I love uncertainty!”

There is a reason humans create systems, institutions, spreadsheets, blueprints, and of order. Humans make reservations at restaurants and hotels, prepurchase tickets, keep calendars, follow routines, schedule events – because human nature tends to gravitate towards certainty. Humans hold on to certainty at all costs, even when the system or the-way-we-have-always-done-it is no longer working.

Ambiguity means uncertainty.

Ambiguity, is also defined by Merriam-Webster as the quality or state of allowing for more than one interpretation;

a word or expression that can be understood in two or more possible ways. In a world with ever increasing polarity and taking stands for or against, living life as if others are opponents, ambiguity is unwelcome.

 

On this second Sunday of Lent our human nature is invited to explore ambiguity by walking with Abram and Sarai as they follow God’s dream and promise into the unknown. Theologian Walter Brueggaman points out that their pursuit of God’s promise is a multi-generational journey – a willingness to walk beyond human nature of wanting to possess and achieve in ones’ lifetime. Abram and Sarai are fully aware that they are in God’s time, where they live fully in the present – in the very creation of each moment, accepting it as it is, behaving or responding accordingly.

Earlier in the year we read difficult to digest passages from the Gospel of Matthew. There was much ambiguity. Do you remember the discussion about righteousness? The ambiguity of a definition and ambiguity of the interpretation of the Law; no real answers to the question of who was in and who was out; who was right and who was wrong. There was more than one interpretation. We heard the Beatitudes, the blessed are they/the blessed are yous, that were quite ambiguous in nature and left much space for interpretation by the listener. When coming to the land to walk with the disciples why did Jesus speak with so much ambiguity?

 

Abram and Sarai went, I suspect following already made paths and roadways, established caravan routes – choosing in the moment what felt safe, looked promising; traveling with others by invitation or accident, changing direction due to weather, or need of provisions. They were on a journey -- an ambiguous exciting journey.

A theme of Lent is journey – faith journey, journey to the cross. Standing with Abram and Sarai on the land, daring to entertain walking into ambiguity with them along a caravan route… all of a sudden Matthew’s Gospel became less ambiguous to me because I realize that God is comfortable with ambiguity. There is no one answer, no clear definitions, no easy explanation to parables or teachings because it depends where the sojourner is: Where you are. Where a community is. Where we are as a church.  All are on a journey of faith with various degrees of relationship with God, creation, and others – so obviously the answer and interpretation of the Law, of scripture, is not the same for every listener, or every community – holy moly! talk about ambiguity!!!!! Faith and the path, what it is to follow Jesus is ambiguous because God has given humans free will to make choices, so we travel different routes on various maps, in uncharted territories, in foreign lands, in beautiful gardens. God didn’t give specifics because God didn’t/doesn’t know where freewill will lead us, or where the preaching of the gospel will take us, or where compassion stops us, where repentance turns us around, or grace re-directs us.

And God’s nature is okay with us.

 

An invitation is extended to us this morning to ‘go to a land that I will show you.’ It means intentionally stepping into ambiguity onto paths as yet untrod: the path follows The Way, it is a journey to the cross, it is a way of suffering and compassion, it is daring to say ‘yes’ and risking everything to the ambiguity of God’s big dream.

The journey requires a tremendous amount of grace and understanding, patience and acceptance. It will take practice and allowing our human nature to live beyond our ability, beyond our control, beyond our truth, beyond our interpretation. Once in a new environment, a new place where our patterns and ways of being no longer work and we are, in a sense, ‘lost’, it is then that we are born again  - birthed into a new perspective. One that is embraced in God’s nature.

This is the journey of Lent.