This week’s Torah reading is from Genesis 12:1-17:27. Within this section of scripture we come to the point in salvation history where God first speaks to Abram. During this initial discussion God tells Abram to leave the country where he was living and the family that he had there to go to a new land. God promised him that in this new land He would make him into a great nation, that He would bless him, make his name great, and that through these things he would be a blessing to others.
This section of scripture takes us on the early journey of Abram’s life with God.
There are many things that I gather from this story that I find relevant to our journey with God and the calling that He has upon our lives. I find a lot of comfort reading about Abram’s challenges with fear, about his times of questioning, and about when he got out in front of God and decided to take matters into his own hands. It is comforting to read about how God blessed Abraham in spite of these errors and how God used all of the mistakes to grow Abram, transform Abraham, and prepare him for what He would ultimately call him to be (and do).
With that said, the thing that really struck me this year was this; The calling to a journey.
As I read this my mind went immediately to Jesus picking His disciples and telling them to walk away from the lives that they had known and to follow Him. I thought about Mary and Gabriel telling her that she was to be pregnant out of wedlock and that her son would be the Messiah. As my mind continued to be filled with scripture and images, I landed on Jesus telling us that those who lay down their lives will find life and those that try to hold on to their life will lose it.
When we think about laying down our lives we tend to think about physical things. But how about the emotional and/or spiritual? And of the emotional/spiritual, what is the greatest and most difficult to lay down?
As I think about Abraham, Mary, and the disciples that followed Jesus, I see a common theme of death and re-birth. The common theme is identity. Abram was called to leave the land he had grown up in, the family he identified with, and the people he had come to know and who knew him. He was sent to a new land where he would have to learn a new way of life, encounter God, enter into a covenant with God, and become the father of a great nation. The change for Abram was so drastic that even he and his wife were given new names. What do you think that would have been like at family reunions?
Mary was kind of the same but in a different way. The concept of being with child while not married was not on Mary’s list of how to make a good impression with the new neighbors list. I have to believe that her image of what life would be like with Joseph did not include the persecution, judgement, or even challenges of raising the Son of God. Life for Mary got a whole lot more complicated and probably only a very little of what she had thought her future would hold ended up being the reality of her life.
The same holds true for the disciples that heard Jesus utter the words “come and follow me, I will make you fishers of men”. They had spent their adult lives in the family dynamic that they had become accustomed to, they were settled into their careers, and they were a part of the religious scene in the magnitude that they believed would remain reasonably consistent for the remainder of their lives. In the blink of an eye their entire destiny changed. Everything became different.
How many of us understand that when God calls us into this relationship with Him, we too are called to die to the old and step into the new in a very similar way? How much of our old lives and the images of the future that we have built our hope on is He asking us to walk away from? How much of what we don’t understand is waiting for us on the horizon whereby all of it will be asking us to let go of who we have known ourselves to be so that we can start identifying with who He knows us to be?
In all of this there are some things that I know and some things that I believe. As I look at Abram’s life, I see Abraham being more courageous and having a greater faith in God. When I look at Saria verses Sarah, I see a woman who is no longer Abram’s sister, but Abraham’s wife. As such, I no longer see Isaac as the product of an incestual relationship that would be dishonoring to God, but I see him as the son of a man and a woman who God gave new identities to and who He defined as husband and wife. In all of these things I see a man who allowed himself to re-identify himself with being the child of God as overwhelming the physical relationship of being the son of his physical father Terah.
I know that God is calling each of us into this aspect of identity. In the journey of identifying ourselves as His children we are free to see Him as a good father, full of love, and abounding in loving kindness. In this we are capable of growing in our trust of Him and regardless as to what things we have done wrong, we are free to grow into the understanding that what we have done does not define us, but instead who we are becoming will establish who we are.
Torah gives us a way of life that teaches us to walk in this confidence, to let go of the self-condemnation, and belief that our past does not define us. Torah teaches us about the love, mercy, kindness, and selfless nature of what it is to be a child of God. Torah gives us the tools and instructions that we apply to our lives and through the process the belief that our new identity is real. As we live lives aimed at walking out God’s nature of holiness, mercy, justice, and love we begin to grow in our understanding of who we really are capable of being as we grow into our belief that this really is who we are.
All of these things I know to be true. These are the aspects of the new identity that we are called into and every aspect of the old identity that is contrary to this new nature is to be put to death. Now for the part I can only say I believe. This would be the dying to other aspects of life that would separate us from the understanding of being one of Abraham’s children.
All of the covenant promises were made to Abraham and those that would identify themselves as being a part of his family through the covenant promises extended through God. As the covenants expanded down through Moses and ultimately Jesus, I simply do not see this changing. The reality is, the hardest thing to let go of is how others see us. How many of us take on our old identities of how we interact with the world and become who we used to be when around those that knew us in our old lives even though we have died to those natures in our new life with Him? How much easier would it be if everything about us changed? How much easier would it be if on first sight those old friends would immediately be able to distinguish that we have changed, that we are not the same old person, and that we are no longer identifying with the old person that we have let die?
As I look at where God’s covenant ultimately takes us, and what it looks like to associate our identity with being children of His first, descendants of Abraham second, and then the children of our natural parents third, I see an interesting dynamic being created.
As His children we step into the belief that living His ways will ultimately lead us into becoming more like Him. This would be more loving, more just, and more holy. At the same time, it leads us into the belief that we will have more power over the spirit realm and a greater confidence that He will lead us, guide us, and protect us. In this we see ourselves as His children and Him as a loving God. The entire dynamic of the relations shifts to one of truth and grace, it incorporates the understanding of forgiveness alongside punishment, and encouragement alongside the challenges of testing and refinement.
As children of Abraham we take on the identity of a people living in covenant with God. We establish our lives based on that covenant with the belief that the promises of that covenant are extended to us just as they are to the natural descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This association leads us into honoring God through the same holidays that He gave “our ancestors” to honor Him, to embrace the same notions of holiness that He provided to “our ancestors”, and that we embrace the same life style that He gave “our ancestors”. In doing this we change our secondary identity to that of our family of birth toward that of a family in covenant with God.
Finally, God does not want us to all look the same, act the same, cook the same, and live lives that look like cookie cutter replicas of each other. Showing our first two loyalties as children of God and then Abraham still allow us to show loyalty to our natural parents. This demonstration of loyalty to our natural parents is a beautiful thing when put under the loyalty of our relationship to God and Abraham. God does not want us to stop identifying with our natural parents, the lands from which we grew up, or the aspects of life that make us uniquely who we are. He simply asks us to run every aspect of who we have been through a filter that will tell us if holding onto it will will keep us from becoming who we are in the new life that He has given us.
In the simplest form I think most of us can relate. Before I came to know Jesus, I watched particular movies, told all kinds of jokes, spoke in particular ways, and generally lived in a form of life that had been greatly influenced by my childhood years. After coming to know Him, I started dying to these old ways of life, was reborn into some new patters, and have been growing in this way every since. At the same time, there are things that I have not changed while at the same time allowing the underlying motivation behind these aspects of life to change. In this, I have moved my identity with God above my identity with my past wile still holding onto that identity where possible without compromising my identity with God.
Over the last ten years I have allowed my identity with Abraham and being one of his descendants to have a similar impact on my life choices. Now I run my decisions through two filters. First, does this old pattern of life stand in contract to my new identity as one of God’s children? Second, does this old pattern of life stand in contract to my new identity as one of Abraham’s children walking in covenant with God as an heir of the promises made to Abraham and his descendants?
If in either case I hear the Spirit telling me that some aspect of the “old me” is in contrast to the “new me” that He is creating, I ask what aspect of the “old me” needs to die. What I have discovered is that almost every area of life has aspects of the “old me” that needs to die to allow room for me to become the “new me”.
The cool thing is that once I work through how other people will view these changes, the changes themselves are not overly demanding or too hard. I still cook with the same recipes that the “old me” came to love, I just don’t use ingredients that would contradict my identity with God and/or my identity as one of Abraham’s descendants. The same holds true for celebrations and what clothing I buy and wear. In both of these cases I can still express myself in a way that is uniquely “me” while simply dying to those aspects of the “old me” that would contradict this “new me” identity. The pork and shellfish are removed from the recipes, the celebrations that show loyalty to false gods have been removed, and I wear the tsit-tsit on my belt loops. At the same time, I eat in the same basic ways I have always eaten, I still get to have friends over for great celebrations, and my clothing is still uniquely me. The major change is that in each case, I have allowed God to take me on a journey of transformation in each of these areas of life. I do believe this is the journey that we are all called to and I pray that each of us consider this and seek the Spirit's directive in how to incorporate such changes into life.
Whatever your journey, I am sure
we can all relate to the death/new birth journey of those called by God. I pray that this has been a blessing and a
challenge. Amen.
