Genesis 12:1-4
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
March 1, 2026
Right before Covid hit, BBC journalist Vicky Baker felt compelled to jump on a Eurostar to Paris to visit an old friend named Jim Haynes, an American artist whose home there included a big art studio where people of every size, shape, color and culture gathered.
As soon as Vicky stepped out of the wet cold into Jim’s warm home, she felt hugged by the welcoming buzz and glow of Jim’s crowd: a joyful fellowship of locals, immigrants and travelers, bunched together in conversational circles or milling around the bubbling stew pot emitting a savory aroma.
Every Friday Jim’s door was open to everyone, no questions asked; and everyone was welcomed, accepted and respected with grace and gratitude.
That’s a picture of how church should be, though – because so many mistrust church – those in the church can’t, like those in Jim’s crowd, wait for others to come to them, but must go out to others to meet them on their home turf and draw them in with loving kindness.
Just before God called Abram (a.k.a. Abraham), the human race had become, from the fall of the tower of Babel, scattered and separated by different languages and locations over the face of the earth. So God began to implement a plan to use one person to initiate a long process by which to bring all back together again.
At the moment God called Abram, he must have felt disheartened, disoriented and even disabled. His father had just died, one of his brothers had just died, a nephew had just been orphaned, he himself was nearly dead as a man, and his wife couldn’t get pregnant.
Fortunately, the plans of God do not depend for their fulfillment on the potential of the human participants. God brings about what His collaborators cannot. Thus, the Apostle Paul viewed Abram as the model of faith because Abram believed in the God who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist”. When God called Abram, the nation of Israel and the church of Christ did not exist; but the man who was as good as dead became the father of both of them.
And how did Abram show faith? He took a wild, daring risk. He listened to God and obeyed His command. He left his country, his clan and the comfort of the world he knew to enter a new world about which he knew nothing because God had told him nothing about it. God gave him no information about his destination, but only a promise He’d show him he was there once he arrived.
If Abram let go of everything he was used to, he could receive a gift better than anything he’d imagined; and if Abram put everything on the line in the pursuit of a wonderful possibility, he could obtain the reality of a great gain. And if Abram used His blessings to bless others, he could be blessed beyond measure. Abram, like the followers of Jesus, had to lose his life in order to find himself with a new and better life.
We of the church of Christ are the descendants of Abraham; and we must follow the path our father Abraham took to enjoy the blessedness he gained. Even while we cherish the family we already are, we must reach out to serve other families. We must help those who are not members of our community.
Once, along the south coast of Australia, a wedding party was posing for photos on a scenic ledge overlooking the ocean. A woman unrelated to the family or its festivities fell into the water and started to drown. The best man, still dressed in his tuxedo, jumped in after her to pull her in. The bride, a trained nurse still in her white dress, waded through the waves to quickly administer CPR. By the time the paramedics showed up, the woman had regained consciousness and was standing under her own power. A safety official noted she would’ve died had not the bridal party interrupted their good times and risked their lives to save her.
The drenched best man and bride, now messes no longer camera ready, were happy just to have rescued her, and they invited her to join them at their reception.
That wedding party depicts how this one church should be for all in need of us. Though we may be having a blast with each other, we too are to stand ready to dive into mission for the sake of others even when it is inconvenient, risky and in fact costly. Celebrating God and serving people, and loving Jesus and loving strangers, constitute the dual nature of our call to be one community sent out to bless all.
By the way, in fulfilling that call, we will not just bless our neighbors, but we will be blessed by our neighbors. For as we grow wiser and wider in our outreach, we grow wiser and deeper in our fellowship – if we invite those of communities different than our own to come join the party, welcome them as family, give them place and power in our midst, refuse to insist that they fit into how we are at present, but allow them to be God’s agents to reshape us into how God would better like us. The church may need this one’s prayerfulness, that one’s courtliness, this one’s exuberance, that one’s sober thoughtfulness; and so forth.
God made the human race a diversity of every kind of giftedness and proclivity. God wants the church to be a community of mutually affirming unity that avails of the best of every community willing to have a part in it.
So let this family of Christ both reach out and be reshaped, that we might be one that blesses all.
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